The Doppelgänger Effect
by Asper
Summary: A/H UST. A string of seemingly supernatural kidnappings cuts painfully close for Myles, all committed by a stranger with Holly's face. Artemis and company must race around the globe - and against the clock - in order to save the world. Again.
1. Prologue: The Worst Party Ever

**Disclaimer: **You know the drill, folks: not mine. Not a drop of it.

**Warnings: **This story takes place five or so years following the events in the Time Paradox. As such, it will contain relevant spoilers.

* * *

**Hall of Mirrors, Palace of Versailles, France **

Sabine Marchix was anxious.

No, it had nothing to do with the pressing humidity that raged like a curse during the French summer. And no, it was not the overwhelming feeling of grandeur evoked by her lush surroundings or even the slow swish of lavish fabrics decking the guests that twirled around the wooden floors. It wasn't the grand and glorious décor that spanned the length of the full ballroom: the 17th and 18th century frescoes lining the ceiling and glittering chandeliers, nor the 800 hectares of carefully manicured gardens extending out behind the palace for as far as the eye could see. This was the twelfth time in all of Sabine's twelve and half years that the wealthy and famous Marchix family had rented the Hall of Mirrors for their yearly gala, after all. So no, that hadn't been it at all.

If Sabine's eyes weren't deceiving her, then it was a curiously incessant _fantôme. _

"That's ludicrous," commented Myles Fowl in what was his version of a comforting tone. "Surely I needn't remind you, Mademoiselle, that there are no such things as ghosts?"

She scowled prettily at the dark-haired younger boy. "I know that, dummy. I said: kind of like a ghost. _Kind of_. Besides she – it – had my face. I've seen it twice, Myles. And this is an old castle, after all."

She didn't want to admit it to her cynical classmate, but the night was certainly conducive to a ghost sighting or two – the thick humidity had been lingering all week and finally made good on its promise of rain at the start of their evening. Air conditioning was non-existent in Versailles, and the curators refused to allow any portable devices in for fear of damaging the priceless frescoes, but the Marchixes made up for this with flutes and flutes of instantly available chilled champagne and Rosé, not to mention mineral water and organic, cane-sugar sweetened juices for the younger attendees. But despite all this, the rain simply wouldn't be ignored, raging against the old windows brutally, the damp heat seeping in through every available crack and deflating skirts and bouffants alike.

The Marchix yearly social event was fairly regimental occasion – after Sabine finished the semester at the Académie Ste-Marie (and her yearly living stint in stuffy, downtown Paris), the soiree would usually follow. Smile, dance, smile, dance, smile -- you get the picture -- then the family would return to their summer home in Provence for two months of freedom. Collioure was a quiet paradise: a tiny, windblown village by the sea where her cat, Pissenlit, was waiting for her.

Enduring this night, however, was proving to be a considerably more taxing chore than Sabine had thought. "It looked _just _like me," she said, suppressing a shudder. "It was so creepy."

"A Doppelgänger, then? This wouldn't be a historical first." Myles Fowl was in the same grade as she was, despite being two years her junior. He was second in line to the considerable Fowl fortune and a family friend for as long as she could remember. Sure, he was a smarmy little know-it-all creep most of the time, but Sabine had always regarded him as the (annoying) little brother she had never had.

"Forget it, Myles," she sighed, picking up a crystal flute from a passing waiter and inclined her head in thanks. She needed air, torrential rain or not, and had every intention of poking her head out over the gardens. Just for a breath or two.

For Myles, the conversation was far from over. "No I cannot. Excellent timing, really, my brother and I were discussing this very subject a little while back. Doppelgänger, written with the customary capital letter for nouns in German, as well as the diacritic umlaut over the 'a'. John Donne and Abraham Lincoln were among the many who have reported seeing Doppelgängers of themselves. A bad omen, Sabine. I would heighten my vigilance if I were –"

What happened next stole the words right from Myles' mouth.

There was a crash, a bang, a deafening cacophony as a giant panel of glass imploded from some external force, the chandeliers near the ruined window swaying from the explosive shock in strange harmony. Lightning flashed in the distance, moments later the lagging rumble of near thunder. When everyone opened their eyes, there was a sea of silent shock, wet feathers, ruffles, silks and satin.

And one Myles Fowl, lying in a slurry of rainwater and broken glass, blinking at the empty spot where Sabine Marchix was no longer standing.

o o 0 O 0 o o

* * *

More?


	2. A Rude Awakening

**A/N: **A million thanks to those who reviewed the prologue. Your reviews are what keep me writing illegally at work and at all ungodly hours of the night.

* * *

**Fowl Secondary Mansion, Dublin, Ireland**

This was getting ridiculous.

Artemis had always held a firmly supportive stance on the benefits of adequate nightly rest. Anyone who had pulled an all-nighter could attest to the fact that sleep was absolutely integral to proper neural and somatic function. Recent studies, in fact, showed a positive correlation between approximately eight hours of sleep a night and an extended lifespan, not to mention the therapeutic benefits it offered those who weathered the myriad stresses of everyday life. Like juggling the decryption of the Bronze Age Linear A writing script and a semi-finished lecture on the finer points of quantum physics, for example.

"Beckett," huffed Juliet. "You've been lying there forever!"

12 and a half hours on a school morning, however, was a completely different story.

When Juliet knocked for the twelfth time on the deep mahogany oak of Beckett Fowl's bedroom door (to no avail, alas), Artemis had had enough. Abruptly shutting the top of his laptop computer on all the semi-written files there (he would simply have to try for their completion on the flight over to Heathrow. Or, failing that, improvise), he rose from his desk and made his way up the stairs, checking his wristwatch along the way. 7:35. In four hours and twenty-five minutes, Artemis was expected to lecture at the University of Cambridge on Everett's Many Worlds theory for an upper-level class on quantum physics – what with the postulation of quantum suicide and immortality in the latter part of the 1980s, the theorem had been given new life on the tongues of young scientists. It promised to be a most engaging lecture.

Well, presuming he made it there. Which was a prospect that was looking progressively more impossible with every passing moment. Artemis somewhat regretted offering to drive his younger brother to his summer school lessons that morning (the notion of summer school had made both Myles and Artemis fairly squeamish with distaste, of course, but neither would ever be so callous as to mention so. Beckett had merely rolled his eyes at his brothers' poorly hidden shudders).

Artemis rapped briskly on the door. "Beckett, I advise you to get up immediately."

"Hhhhhngh," came the sleep-ridden answer.

"As you well know, I have a plane to catch and if you don't hurry, you will simply have to walk to the Academy. Butler will be coming with me, as discussed, and Juliet cannot drive following the surgery for her ingrown toenail."

The blonde girl in mention scowled a little at the revelation. Did Artemis need to be so open with her ungual ailments? Really.

"Hhhngh," was the foggy reply.

The boy was incorrigible. Angeline had warned Artemis about Beckett's _excessive_ sleeping habits when she dropped off his flight information at the secondary mansion in the downtown Dublin core, where Artemis currently resided. Her and Artemis Sr. were off to Fiji for another one of their yearly honeymoons, and Artemis had offered to let Beckett stay with him once he returned from Paris for his remedial summer lessons.

"You know your brother, Arty," she had said, kissing her eldest son on the cheek. "He's such a sleepyhead!"

Inaccurate, to say the least. This was not sleepy. This was bordering on downright narcoleptic.

"Beckett. I will give you fifteen minutes to extricate yourself from those sheets, by which time –" Artemis' empty threats were interrupted when Butler appeared on the stairwell, the breakfast apron still smocking his massive form.

"Artemis, there's a phone call for you."

"Ah, thank you Butler." Reaching for the headset, Artemis gave the door one more rap for good measure. "Fifteen minutes, Beckett. Or else I'll be forced –" No, that wasn't nearly threatening enough. "_Butler _will be forced to come in there and persuade you. Hello, Artemis Fowl speaking. Oh, yes, Myles. How are –"

His sentence petered out when the headset delivered a veritable barrage of his younger brother's frantic words, so Artemis stowed the niceties for later and concentrated on the information at hand.

To the outside observers, the conversation that followed was apparently one-sided: Artemis nodded and made one or two noises of understanding while Myles' narrative spanned the entire length of the phone call, barely faltering in its frenetic pace. Butler frowned; this surely spelled trouble. Beside him, Juliet craned her neck to better listen in on their conversation. When both of Artemis' mismatched eyes widened in surprise, Juliet almost fell over the railing.

"I beg your pardon?"

Artemis spared a brief glance at Juliet's stumble before catching Butler's eye. Despite being a good year and a half into his official retirement, Butler had opted to stay with the Fowl family for what they referred to as "light" duty – providing his outstanding Cordon Bleu services coupled with low-level bodyguard work for the Artemis and the younger Fowl charges.

This wasn't a particularly difficult task. Following the clean rebirth of the Fowl dynasty (something Artemis Jr. himself had orchestrated, following his third Nobel prize win), Artemis had assured him that the dangerous, elaborate, seat-of-your-pants shenanigans the two had grown painfully used to were a thing of the past. Butler couldn't figure out whether he was relieved or disappointed.

And so he liked to keep himself a little more than "lightly" armed, just in case – this was, after all, Artemis Fowl.

The dark-haired young man waved Butler over, pressing the speaker button on the handset. "Myles," he instructed clearly. "Would you mind re-iterating the sequence of events leading up to Sabine's disappearance?"

Through the line, a ten-year-old voice sighed. "Of course… Of course – It's just that I have run over the occurrences up until that point umpteen times in my head – and yet without any sudden insight. Throughout the night, Sabine had professed anxiety over a few bizarre sightings. Ghosts, a Doppelganger, something of the sort; as she has been prone to seeing bizarre things all over the Académie, I wrote this off as usual. We pursued our discussion of Doppelgangers – much in the line of our discourse the other day, Artemis, at least for my part –"

Juliet and Butler shared a smile. No, it was very unlikely that Myles and the young Marchix heiress were sharing a two-way conversation akin to the one that had occurred between Myles and Artemis. Butler had had a headache for days.

"She wrote off the feeling, and went to retrieve a glass of mineral water. Sabine was right in front of me until we reached the windows and then – gone. Following a brief explosion by the window, she had disappeared completely."

Sabine Marchix, thought Butler, frowning at the handset. The youngest and only daughter to the Marchix fashion dynasty and a frequent flyer at the Fowl-thrown socials for as long as the twins could talk – a beautiful, charming little girl.

Beside him, Artemis held up a finger; a silent exclamation mark. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Myles, but would you kindly repeat what you were discussing with Sabine prior to her disappearance?"

"Oh… A Doppelganger, if I recall correctly." The background roar of distressed voices mingled with static. "How can anyone think in all this madness?"

"Try to concentrate."

"Yes… She had seen a curious phantom five times that night, one she believed looked exactly like her, bizarre as it sounds."

Beckett had finally deigned to wake up fully, choosing that moment to open his door a crack. "Is that Myles?"

Juliet pressed a finger to her lips, ushering the boy back inside. "Shhh, Beckett. Artemis is thinking."

Before Juliet unceremoniously shut Beckett's bedroom door behind the both of them, he asked: "Juliet, what's a doppelganger?"

Good question, thought Butler, rolling the term around his tongue. If Myles was talking about the sinister ghostly doubles of legend, then something was indeed amiss. They were notoriously bad omens – presumed to be fictional, of course, but Butler had seen far too much to believe a label like that. A whole world's worth. Underground, of course.

He looked to his grown charge for a clue, but as the door closed on Juliet and Beckett, the young man turned the large, rather ostentatious ring on his hand one hundred and eighty degrees.

"Of course, I will see what I can do about obtaining the surveillance footage for you… It was merely a conversation, Artemis," noted Myles. He frowned, for once sounding all of his ten and a half years. "Do you think she'll be found?"

"Yes, Myles," answered Artemis before cutting the line. "I do."

Then he began dialing.

* * *

**Lost Continent of Lemuria, Lower Elements**

This was heaven.

As a LEP soldier, Holly Short had never been particularly used to traveling in comfort – most trips above ground were done in standard-issue LEP shuttles, crammed in close quarters with her fellow sweaty coworkers and their flaky ears, gyroscopes mostly on the fritz. Her driving track record featured the questionable privilege of piloting a shaky shuttle-part Frankenstein, one old mining heap and a stolen snowgood.

Between Lower Element cities, you flew commercial – which, on the LEP budget at least, usually meant an economy-class seat between two dwarves having a gas contest. Not very comfortable, indeed.

"Nettle smoothie?"

Holly nodded a happy yes. This, however. She could get used to _this. _The Lemurian cave-cruise taxi service was almost suspiciously glorious. Not that she complaining, of course.

Lemuria was the closest you could get to living above ground without getting stepped on by a Mud Man – built through an interconnecting series of underwater grottoes in the southern Atlantic ocean. The cave pool beaches were a real tourist attraction, bringing in tired Havenites and Atlanteans all throughout the year. And then there was the ocean, a real dream come true – miles and miles of balmy blue, punctuated by brilliant explosions of multi-coloured coral and friendly schools of fish everywhere you turned.

So when Holly was offered the extremely rare privilege of investigating strange readings in the Xi'an underground from the comfort of the above-mentioned lower-level slice of heaven, she wasn't exactly going to say 'no', now was she?

"Uh-huh," mumbled Holly around a mouthful of delicious sautéed seaflora, the helmet cam sitting on her lap. "I went to check out the readings yesterday."

Underground Xi'an: once the birthplace of kelp suey and a bustling metropolis three thousand years back. Now an empty and nearly ticking biohazard. The area had been evacuated following the death of Emperor Shi Huangdi at the end of the Qin dynasty, when the slightly mad Emperor had made the following last request: to be laid amidst a shimmering lake of pure mercury, destined to lie in glittering repose for the rest of time.

Typical Mud Men, thought Holly. Sure, it was shiny, but that pool of mercury was about a hundred times more immediately toxic than leaked radiation, not to mention the fact that it now occupied a place thousands of fairies once called home. The entire underground cave had been suitably reinforced with a shell of eco-friendly, coral and resin-based polymers to prevent any nearby contamination. Unlike plastic, it wouldn't be around in a million years. Easy to scan through, but not even a hundred tonnes of deadly mercury would make its way out of there.

No sense in being reckless, however. The area was strictly forbidden to civilians, and LEP weren't allowed in without a level-4 toxshox (the slang term for the biotoxin body suit, which had the added use of dream-mold cushioning for any sudden explosions). Which was why the readings needed to be obtained from nearby Lemuria.

Across the helmet-screen, Foaly rolled his eyes. "Oh really? And did Her Highness get the opportunity to find anything in those empty tunnels, other than the salad bar?"

"Watch it, Pony Boy. I'm fairly Zen right now, but that doesn't I will be when I get back."

Suppressing an indignant whinny, the centaur turned to type something into his computer, calling up the schematics stored on her headset. "Holly dear, I've never been one to complain, but I think you're fairly spoiled."

"And I think you're fairly paranoid. Except minus the _fairly_." She grinned inwardly. Foaly was jealous of this little pseudo-vacation, of course, but it wasn't the only thing he was alluding to. The last eight or so years had been kinder to her than those preceding them, what with the Council's stance that she was relatively unstable coupled with Trouble's terrible habit of sweeping her subordination and property damage counts under the rug. The two had combined to make way for plenty of above-ground recon missions (the Council's opinion: a needed stress-reliever for their resident wild card. Trouble's opinion: a break for an overworked friend) and even on a diplomatic mission in Atlantis, though the latter was entirely due to her famous face (and Foaly wouldn't let her forget it). Now this. Oh, Holly had a fairly good idea what Foaly was whining about.

"I have absolutely no idea what you're whining about," she lied, finishing off the last sip of nettle goodness. "Anyway, are you finding anything interesting on those schemes?"

Foaly scratched a hairy cheek. "Nah. The energy spikes seem to be much fainter now – not totally gone, mind you, or I'd have you in toxshox and down in that tomb in two shakes of a tail. But: nada. I hate to say it, but it looks like you're right. Just the residual pulses from the surrounding flora and fauna. Nothing in there. Not a soul. Except for Mr. Huangdi, of course."

"No big surprise there," sighed Holly sadly. "That place is an environmental disaster waiting to happen."

"You've got bigger things to sigh about, Holly" said Foaly, cracking his knuckles with terrible glee. "Looks like the party's over. Come on home, Captain Short!"

Rolling her eyes, Holly tried to suppress her smile. "Got it, got it," she briefly glanced at the time setting on her wrist-comm. "I'm in the cruise-cab now, so we're a little ways from the shuttle dock. But I'll try to catch the next shuttle home, alright?"

"_Try_," scoffed Foaly. "On that cruise-cab the only thing you'll be _trying _to do is fit another gourmet meal in your stomac–" A mail icon flashed in the corner of the screen, interrupting the centaur's ribbing. Annoyed, Foaly peeked at the sudden distraction.

It read: ARTEMIS FOWL. Holly sat up immediately.

"And why do I get the distinct feeling of déjà vu?" he sighed. "So? Are you going to open that or just gape at it all day?"

Ignoring him, Holly touched the screen with a finger. HOLOGRAPH? The cursor prompted. She selected yes.

Immediately a small screen was projected from the dark visor case, a less-than-perfect image filling the display. The poor quality (relatively speaking, of course. Above ground, this was the utmost in picture resolution) was mostly due to the distance between Lemuria and Ireland in addition to underwater interference, but Holly couldn't resist the opportunity to give Foaly's screen a disapproving look. "For all the big bucks they've been pouring into your budget, Foaly. Look at this, the call doesn't even have two-way capability. Tsk, tsk."

He whinnied indignantly. "Don't look at me like that. It's the darn caves down there; the stalactites and stalagmites bounce the signals like a ping-pong. And for your information: that's a pre-recorded message Artemis is sending, there'd be no two-way capability _ever_."

Artemis' face then appeared in the screen, only slightly distorted by the shape of the camera in the communicator. Despite herself, Holly smiled; he looked older – no doubt, what with the rapid flow of time through the human genome – his trademark worry frown now slightly more distinct above his mismatched eyes. But still familiar, nevertheless. His was a face neither Holly nor Foaly would ever forget.

"Holly," he said, enunciating clearly. "A young French heiress, Sabine Marchix, has been taken hostage. Not by me. There are… noticeable complications that are possibly pertinent to the Lower Elements or else magical beings. A purported Doppelganger. I will send you the video footage from the scene shortly. Try to round up the usual suspects and contact me as soon as possible." A pause. "In case I neglected to mention, this is Artemis Fowl."

The transmission ended abruptly, followed by another brief flash indicating the arrival of the promised footage.

"Like I don't know who you are, Artemis," said Holly, rolling her eyes. She opened up the .mpeg, knowing that Foaly currently had data access to her monitor screen. "Foaly, you watching?"

"Shhh," hissed the centaur. "The movie's starting."

Artemis had helpfully cropped the footage to follow from the end of Sabine's last dance, showing her with a slender, dark-haired boy (Myles or Beckett Fowl? It had been a while since Holly had seen them, so she couldn't be sure). She reached for a beverage, the two made their way to the line of windows along the far wall, the boy trailing slightly behind her, before –

"Oh gods," breathed Holly.

After the first second of stunned silence had passed, Foaly gave into his intrigue. The frantic clack of keys could be heard through his transmission. "1.14 seconds… The snatch lasted approximately 1.14 seconds, give or take, from the moment the implosion began to the point at which she disappears –" He sent Holly another transmission of the footage, slowed and marked screen by screen. Foaly's explanation was completely right: one frame the young girl was there, the next she was simply not. "Here."

Holly bit her lip. "Disappeared, though? That's kind of –"

"I know, I know. But from what this camera tells us, that's exactly what happened. It's the frames-per-second capability on those above ground junk heaps, not to mention the send. These prehistoric Mud Man transmission systems are so damn _lossy_ – Anyway, if I could get to the raw footage, I might be able to coax some more information out of it. I've just invented a new frame-extrapolator, incredible, really– "

"Right," nodded Holly, stomping on Foaly's egotistical tangent, and opened up a secondary communication to the Police Plaza. "Commander? Commander Kelp, Captain Short with a request here."

In a lighter situation, Foaly may have been tempted to quiz her request: a standard above-ground transmission didn't need to be approved by the Commander, but Holly wasn't about to ask for a mere transmission. In fact, she was going to request an above ground recon hop, which might have seemed a little excessive to anyone reviewing the budgetary allowances. But Foaly held his tongue; frankly, he was getting mighty curious about all this himself.

Still. "Oh, well why not. The Commander's just _handing _out those upstairs missions these days."

Which was a bad time for Trouble's familiar face to appear on the view screen. But it did, nevertheless. "Would you like to repeat that, Foaly?"

"Er – hey there, Commander. What's shaking?"

Trouble Kelp ran a weary hand through his hair, opting to hold Foaly's comment against him later.

"Oh, the usual mayhem. We're having some security issues at Howler's Peak – as in nobody wants to guard it."

Foaly whinnied appreciatively. "The goblins aren't crying over it, though," he explained to Holly. "You should check out the celebratory pyrotechnics going on in that joint… Ahem." He caught Trouble's warning look and stopped.

Holly nodded grimly. She could almost imagine Grub's complaints at being technically demoted to prison guard. And after having faced a Mud Man, too.

"So what can I–" Trouble checked the subject heading of Holly's transmission. "A request? Oh, no."

"Don't say that, Commander. I'd like to request an above-ground recon mission –"

Trouble glanced at the received icon in the corner of her desktop. More accurately, at the name written there. "Artemis Fowl. Oh no, Holly. Please don't do this; I'm drowning in red tape over here and you want me to – "

"_In regards_ to a potentially dangerous issue regarding a kidnapping in France. I'm sending you the info now, Chief, but I'd like to head on over and get the details about all this in person. With your permission, of course."

Trouble took a few seconds to watch the footage before clutching his temples. It had been a long day: first rioting outside the prison, then the mounds of mission relevant paperwork teetering on his desk. And now this. These days, it seemed his officers gave him a bigger headache than all the civilians in Haven and Atlantis combined. He'd almost _prefer_ a nearly impossible Retrieval op.

"Holly, I know that this could be an issue. _Could._ The thing is, we can't send you up on friendly jaunts all the time. It sets a precedent, and not solely for other officers. In the fourteen years since we've known him, Artemis Fowl still hasn't learned that we are not his personal police force.

Holly felt her heart sink a little. It was all true. What could she possibly say to that? "Commander, I promise that if this turns out to be nothing, I'll be on the very first shuttle home. I swear to you."

The Commander spent the majority of his time looking pretty worn out these days, it wasn't something above Foaly and Holly's notice. The higher responsibility had taken a bit of a chunk out of his usual gung-ho spirit, and the unending pile of paperwork associated with the job was clearly taking its toll. But it was part of the job, and it was a job that Trouble did brilliantly. Commander Kelp was no Julius Root, but he was a good Commander, heck – a _great _Commander, one who truly cared about the Lower Elements. His reign had seen an eight year stint of hard-won peace, and it was one that he was determined to keep.

He glanced up at the screen. "What does Foaly say, Holly?"

Foaly had preempted this question and opened up a window to the Plaza. "I hate to say it, Trub, but it looks like it might be legit. I don't quite see the correlation between Artemis' Doppelganger theory and the footage, but I'd say that Holly's fairly used to his tricks. And frankly, I'd like to get a look at the data first-hand, myself."

"Right, then," Trouble nodded resolutely. "Captain Short, you want an above ground reconnaissance mission, you've got one. You get Foaly until I need him, and if you find anything, I want the very first number dialed to be mine. Keep me updated. And please don't let this come and bite me on the backside."

"Roger, Trouble," answered Holly with a grin, shutting their connection and opening another one on her personal line.

Foaly noticed. "Oh ho, another line? Aren't _you_ the popular one today. Who now?"

Well, speaking of backsides, Holly had a dwarf to contact.

* * *

**Atlantis, Lower Elements**

"Day to Diggums, do you copy?"

Mulch Diggums poked his hairy head around from behind a variety store and out onto the dimly lit street.

"Day to Diggums, do you copy?"

In the distance a faint rumbling was felt; the intra-city commercial shuttles, of course. His stakeout point was located right beside the shuttle track towards Haven City. A three-legged sea urchin scuttled near the sack at his foot, black spines tickling at his ankle. Geez, downtown Atlantis was dump these days. Rot, mold and insect infestation were all things Mulch could appreciate. Not so much the tourists, garbage and creepy, belowground vermin. He'd take a rat over those any day.

"Shoo!" hissed the dwarf, kicking at it while maintaining a decent level of stealth. It was sniffing now, he thought. Any second and –

It lifted one spindly leg and relieved itself all over his rucksack.

Great. He wasn't stupid enough to have taken anything of profound value on this stakeout, of course, but there _was_ his lunch in there. Er – his _ex-_lunch. Not to mention the omnitool Holly had bought him for a birthday present two years ago. And only four months before his actual birthday, too. Elves. Always with their heads in the clouds.

"Day to Diggums, copy? Do you copy? Over."

The dwarf squinted into the dim expanse of the road, having foregone the firm's veritable treasure trove of retired LEP gadgetry (courtesy of Foaly and Holly) for the comfort of using his own considerable nighttime vision. He did his best work this way, anyway. Sure, it had taken a mouthful of convincing for the pony to, well, pony up the LEP sloppy seconds, but Mulch didn't feel too guilty over wasting their efforts. It sounded like Doodah was enjoying the second-hand weaponry enough for the both of them.

"MULCH!"

"You rang, Doody?"

"_Doodah_," the pixie growled in response at the nickname. "And oh, hey Mulch. How kind of you to pick up, you good-for-nothing –"

Mulch plucked a beetle from his beard and tossed it away after a moment's consideration. 8 years of beetle-based grub did that to a person. "Why? Don't tell me you're getting lonely over there."

"Ha! Tell me: are _you_ getting kinda lonely over there?"

Mulch considered. "Nah, I've got a wild hankering for fried sea urchin, maybe, but I'm pretty good. The tar puddle levels are high, the vermin are out, the streets are empty –"

"_Well_, Mr. I-Never-Pick-Up-the-Comm," interrupted Doodah. "There's a very good reason for that. The last thing you said."

"Oh, I'm sure there is."

"Because Fern's band of LEP goonies headed off OUR mark two streets over, that's why."

"Ah."

"One of these days I'm going to hit that gung-ho amateur right where it hurts. All those hours of stinking stakeout time and –"

Captain Alan Fern, the Academy-fresh newbie that had taken to piggybacking off their jumps, and Doodah's archenemy extraordinaire. What he didn't know was that Mulch and Doodah had been tailing the mark in question for weeks now, for her suspected part in an Underground Yakuza. Bagging her was a deal that would have paid the rent for _years_.

That was the really tricky thing about these mobster types. You didn't go picking them off all guns-a-blazin'. The smart ones, the really smart ones that is, didn't have enough dirt on their hands to keep them in custody long enough for Foaly to hack into a Mud Man bank. And that wasn't very much time at all.

Doodah was fuming. "And then when I find him, I'm going to botch up every one of his badly-planned, girly-pleasing, ad-libbed lucky shots he calls missions. And after I do that, I'm gonna –"

Oh well. You won some, you lost some. Stakeouts weren't really Mulch's forte anyway. Too much standing around and being quiet. Right now, all he wanted to do was sit back on a nice topsoil recliner and dig into a bucket of fried chicken and French fries – A squelch beneath his boots brought him back to Earth. Or below it. Oh right. He was still Underground. Vegans for miles in every direction.

Sometimes he really regretted his decision to go legit.

At that moment, a little icon flashed green in the corner of Mulch's communicator screen – a tiny sprig of holly representing a message from one slightly violent female LEP captain of the same name. A smile tugged at the dwarf's lips as he cut the connection on Doodah's vicious rant and opened up the incoming transmission.

"Well bless my soul," was Mulch's friendly greeting that night. "Captain Holly Short. How're you doing? You typically in over your head without me?"

"Top of the evening to you, too. How's life on the sunnier side of the law?" Over the line, Holly grinned back at the dwarf, typing in a few codes to obtain the location stamp from his broadcast. "Looks like you're right in my neighborhood. Hey Mulch, you want to go for a ride?"

Mulch lifted a soggy foot for the camera, tar pulling from his sole like melted cheese. "You must be psychic."

"No," Holly offered mockingly. "Just typically in over my head without you."

A streetlamp flickered feebly, a flock of urchins scuttled away. Roof shingles flaked and fluttered when the roar of an incoming shuttle rattled the ground like a jackhammer. In a heartbeat, the vehicle sped by Mulch Diggums' street corner with breakneck speed – but not before a slender arm reached through the open window and pulled him through.

* * *

_Please review, guys. Pretty please?_


	3. The Unusual Suspects

**Disclaimer: **Artemis Fowl is the property of Eoin Colfer.

**A/N: **A huge hug for all reviewers. You're absolutely brilliant.

* * *

**E37, Tara, Ireland**

"Artemis, huh?" Mulch happily helped himself to the contents of the in-shuttle fridge. "An invitation, too? It better be an engraved gold card. It's only been five years since I've seen the Mud Boy, hope he hasn't forgotten my address."

Holly flicked the starter switch, warming up the shuttle engines. The wall shook with the promise of an incoming flare and without the engine warm-up, the heated metal would expand and puff the shuttle like a popcorn kernel. "Five years is a long time in human years, Mulch." She sounded a little sad.

The dwarf took a second to mull this over. "Huh. You're right. Let's see, five years, five years… I guess I'll be washing his dentures for him once we get up there?"

Holly rolled her eyes. Mulch could be such an idiot sometimes. "Give or take sixty years." Satisfied that the engines were smoothly running and raring to go, Holly chose a suitable helmet from the equipment rack, tugging lightly at the sizing straps. She pulled the contraption over Mulch's hairy head, then gave the dark dome a fond rap. "I'll be kicking myself for this later, but I think I'm glad to see you, Mulch. Nobody gets time to just hang out down here."

"That's a lie," protested the dwarf. "I came to see you just last month."

"Oh wait, that's right. And that was about the time I realized my old Neutrino was conveniently missing."

Mulch may have said that all the LEP hand-me-downs were 'donated'. This, in fact, was a slight stretch of the truth.

"Ah – Oh, I've got it now. 8 years would make our little Mud Boy almost 23 human years right? What is that, like Foaly's age, no… The Commander's? Mine?" Holly gave a badly hidden scoff. His eyes finally rested on Holly. "Oh wait… I think that would be yours, wouldn't it?"

He was right. Despite the fact that the People – specifically fairies and sprites – possessed life spans that far surpassed those of regular human beings (_regular_ being the key word here – rumor had it that Methuselah recently celebrated his 2969th birthday in the Himalayas), they were still humanoid creatures, therefore overtly aging in a similar fashion, though at a different rate. Theoretically, Foaly had once explained, the maturity process was interchangeable – you'd hack off the appropriate number of years to get your equivalent human age. "Or you could just look at them," Foaly had joked. "For example, if you were a human, there's no _way_ I'd let you into my bar." Har de har.

Holly pressed the visor button and the dark screen slid over Mulch's smirking mug. "Say _guest _for the username and _LEP _for the password. I'll send you what I've got and you can see our invitation for yourself. I'm warning you, though: it's no gold engraving."

Mulch took a few moments to review the footage, adding in some overly-dramatic gasps as he did so. Finally, he removed his helmet and whistled. "You're right it's no gold card. And this has to do with me in some terribly dangerous capacity, I reckon?"

"Hey, don't look at me. You heard the man: _the usual suspects_." Holly shrugged. "And wipe that stupid smile off your face, Diggums; you know as well as I do that this is probably one of Artemis' stupid schemes. Which means its going to get pretty ugly pretty fast."

"Heh. You're looking kind of tense there, Holly," diagnosed Mulch jovially. "Don't worry, it'll be like a party. A reunion party! And if old Artemis does anything wrong, you can always punch his pretty little nose in. It'll be just like old times."

"Oh, don't even start with me, Mulch," said Holly, smiling despite herself. "I'm still pretty miffed over getting thrown off the commercial shuttle back to Haven and having to walk the seventeen kilometers back because no taxi would take you."

The dwarf shrugged, appearing nonchalant. "Hey, it's not like I boarded that train back there ticketless out of my own free will, now did I?"

"They wouldn't have asked you for your ticket if you hadn't smelled so bad."

"Not entirely my fault," he explained, holding up one very stinky omnitool. "Partially yours, in fact. I had to bring the omnitool you gave me, seeing as it was gift from my favorite equipment donor, Holly Short. It's not my fault an Atlantean sea urchin peed all over it."

Holly didn't even bother gracing this with an answer. She just pointed a finger towards the in-ship bathroom. "Wash it. Now."

"Alright, alright," said Mulch, rolling his eyes. "I heard you." Elves. So darn temperamental.

* * *

**Fowl Secondary Manor, Dublin, Ireland**

Artemis had several things to do between the time he had sent his transmission and ETA of his invited guests. First and foremost, a call had to be placed to Cambridge, offering some explanation for his absence ("A sudden and – er – violent bout of stomach distress," he had been forced to settle on when the Director of Science would simply not take no for an answer. Butler spent the entire conversation smirking in the corner). Following that, he sent Butler to drive the protesting Beckett to school, while Juliet headed out to the garden to harvest some fresh vegetables, saving her questions for later.

Upon exiting Beckett's bedroom, she had stumbled upon the latter part of Artemis' conversation. Needless to say, Juliet had been a tad confused. "Er, Artemis. This may seem like a stupid quesiton, but are you talking into your ring?"

He started, before catching himself and straightening carefully. "Oh, Juliet. Yes, I was."

"Okay. Why?"

"I was merely thinking. It appears as though time has given me a few subconscious habits."

"Huh." She mentally took note of his level of sanity. Fairly normal. This was strange, but even stranger was the distinct feeling that fluttered briefly through the pit of her stomach – a brief flash of terrible familiarity. The half-memory flickered and wavered, dissipating before it became tangible. Juliet blinked. "Are you having guests over?"

"Yes, I believe I will be. Would you mind fetching some fruits and vegetables from the garden before you go home?"

Juliet, like her older brother, had opted to return to the Fowl's for light duty – which included nothing more than generally watching the boys and helping Angeline with spa trips and dress runs. Following her acceptance into Dublin University for her Masters of linguistics, Artemis' parents had relinquished her service to their eldest son, who, living alone, required less attentiveness and purchased her a very snug condo one block from her campus. Which suited her and her new fiancé just fine.

Disregarding sundry activities (mostly legal of course) performed after-hours, Artemis now spent the majority of his time at Trinity College, working within the breakthrough and research development department in addition to occasionally teaching doctorate classes, despite being younger than the majority of his students. Artemis, in a surprise twist of events, had cited the rapport with other scientists as motivation for his decision to work for the university, and had startlingly found their feedback more useful than frustrating – an admission that had Butler secretly beaming with pride. In truth, amazing breakthroughs in the field of science had been achieved because of Artemis' decision to dedicate his considerable mental talents to the betterment of mankind. And Artemis' salary – not to mention the dozens of grants and prizes he had gleaned in his spare time – wasn't exactly hurting the Fowl fortune, either.

Once both Butlers had attended to their individual tasks, Artemis returned to his laptop and called up data on worldwide wealthy kidnappings within the last six months. The search engine had been his own design, of course, which utilized a quick content sweep instead of the usual popularity metrics to rank sites. It had a wider range than standard public use engines like Google or Yahoo, and could be tailored to indicate the importance of an issue with the appropriate search parameters.

Artemis opted for a pertinence sweep, which would yield the most relevant pages in minimal numbers – this gave the user a rough idea of the frequency of the term or issue. The more hits, the more serious the problem. There were several pages of sites. Artemis frowned. Not a widespread problem as of yet, but still not small enough for him to miss it. He would have to dedicate more time away from his latest endeavors to pay attention to current affairs.

Following that, Artemis ran a search once more, this time in information mode. This would yield more sites, some less pertinent than others – it was ideal for digging up information that could have slipped through most search nets. Once he had compiled a decent list of names, whereabouts, family inheritance, etc. etc., it was simple matter of running the information through a program – written by himself – to identify patterns in the data. Not entirely foolproof, of course, given the annoying tendency of mechanized equipment to overlook even simple visual patterns, but that was something he could easily remedy by personally going over the yielded results. And this was what he found:

For starters, the background information among victims and their families seemed apparently random. The pattern sweeper found hits, but for things like possessions and recent vacations, reoccurring names. Individual family industries were incredibly varied (this was expected, as some families were from very old money, indeed), as were the amount of the inheritances themselves. But the victims were all children, all under the age of fourteen. And, most importantly, they were all female.

Eleven kidnappings in all, including Sophie Marchix. Artemis tapped a finger against his lower lip before typing: LOCATION PATTERN.

A detailed map of the world appeared across the plasma screen, faint red lights illuminating the positions where the kidnappings took place. Artemis leaned in close, ignoring the superimposition of shapes created by the pattern program – they would mean very little for the relatively few abductions over such a wide location spread. The eleven dots winked tauntingly, relatively far apart across the diagram. One per continent? No, there were two in South Africa so far, ruling that theory out. The information plot was useless for a visual extrapolation.

Calling up a list of wealthy families with female heirs and their dwellings in his database (with fortunes over the 20 million Euro mark and its worldwide equivalents), Artemis entered the data into the program, setting it to consider only those locations for any further search. REOCCURENCE ESTIMATE, typed Artemis. COUNTRY/CONTINENT.

A number of lights flashed on throughout the map, plotting the likelihood of a reoccurrence based on inherent shape patterns and distances. Artemis opened up his mother's calendar overview and entered the information there into the program. His mother, a social butterfly and conscientious activist alike, always had a number of charity and social events planned. This would enable a time rank of the estimated reoccurrences. TIME PRECEDENCE, Artemis entered. IMMEDIATE MONTH.

This cut the number of dots by nearly seventy-five percent, the lights winking out unceremoniously. Artemis took the liberty of ignoring the further hits for the nearer ones, rationalizing that little diagnostic information-gathering could be done in such a scarce amount of time. That left situations in France, Italy, Monaco, Greece and Switzerland.

Artemis tapped a finger against his knee, thinking. He opened up his own personal calendar. Juliet had been adding events to it via the network; it would have a list of parties and gatherings for the next while.

There. Next week, a gala at the Monte Carlo ballroom run by the Galiboises. It seemed they had their potential next hit location.

At that moment, a brisk rapping came from the southern window, breaking Artemis' heavy concentration. He turned at the sound, to where a helmeted fairy was suspended mid-air, carrying a dwarf by the scruff of his neck.

"Nice place, Mud Boy," said Captain Holly Short. "Now are you going to let us in?"

**Fowl Secondary Mansion, Dublin, Ireland**

"Lookie there," said Mulch, helping himself to the stainless steel fridge in the ample kitchen. "The gang's all here."

Holly couldn't suppress a smile at the hairy behind. "We missed you too, Mulch."

"Who was talking to you? I'm referring to the contents of Fowl's marvelous fridge. Foie gras, sashimi, pont l'eveque, olive oil with truffles… Hoo boy. I've nothing had beetles and algae for the past five years –" The dwarf dipped a hairy finger into a bowl of divine tiramisu, sucking it thoughtfully. "Kind of makes you wonder whether going legit was worth it, eh Arty?"

"Absolutely," admitted Artemis, though for decidedly different reasons. None of the fairyfolk present, with their unfathomably long lifespans, possessed any external indication of age. This was expected, of course, but it still gave rise to an incessantly irrational sensation of nostalgia – Artemis couldn't help thinking that it was just like old times again, save for the fact that they seemed a little shorter than they used to.

Holly shot them both a withering look, then walked over and sideswiped Mulch's backside with her Neutrino.

"Out. Now. You don't get to partake of the digs until we hear what Artemis dragged us up here for." She turned to Artemis. "And it better be good. You have no idea about the kind of hurdles I'm leaping over to be here."

Mulch took a bite out of a pheasant leg. "Is that what you were leaping over? And here I thought it was out of glee."

Before Holly could cause vehemently voice her denial, the computer screen in the north corner of the room winked on, featuring the overinflated ego of one centaur and the said centaur himself. "AND LET THERE BE FOALY!" He declared, hairy arms opened wide.

"Har de har," deadpanned Holly, most unimpressed.

Artemis looked up from his laptop. "Foaly, you certainly seem… exuberant this morning." He checked his watch. "Or evening, I believe, for you."

"It's always night down here, just depends whether or not you want to get technical. You're still looking kind of skinny there, Artemis," Foaly grinned. "Must be all those extra inches stretching you thin."

Holly stifled a laugh. "He's just excited because he's got a baby on the way," she explained to Artemis.

"Really? My congratulations," offered Artemis, making a note to later discuss the matter at length with the centaur. The gestation period of such a rare species was uncharted territory indeed, at least aboveground.

Mulch let out a burp. "Aw shucks," he said mockingly. "This is so touching. Now we get a whole bunch of noisy, big-headed centaurs running amuck in the Underground."

"Mulch," warned Foaly lightly, pulling out the retractable keypad on his computer. "You'd better watch your maw, or I won't name him after you."

The dwarf blinked. "Really?"

Artemis smirked at his diminutive guest. "I sincerely doubt it, my friend. Now Foaly, I have the footage of the kidnapping here, if you require it."

"You read my mind, Mud Boy – er, Man. Holly's got the appropriate disk drive in her helmet, so hand it over to her. Don't want to run it through another set of archaic wires –" He scoffed, wiping a pretend tear of amusement from his eye. "So quaint."

Holly picked up the piece of equipment and moved over to where Artemis stood, hefting it between her hands. "You've gotten tall, Artemis," she noted, taking the CD from him and placing it into the helmet's slot. "I could still teach you a lesson or two, though."

"I don't doubt it, Holly," he retorted with a smile.

"And smiling now, too," Mulch cut in. "Will the wonders ever cease?"

Foaly's clicking had come to a stop. "If you're all done with the witty repartee, I'll need you to hit the orange button on the disc reader, Holly."

Artemis stepped around Mulch and moved closer to the screen, never one to miss another technological upgrade. "If I may inquire, Foaly: what exactly are you intending to do with the footage?"

"And here I thought you'd never ask…" The centaur cracked his knuckles in glee. "Think 'frame extrapolation'."

"Really? Most incredible."

"Absolutely. See, any Mud Man camera has a fairly low number of frames, on average -- relatively speaking, of course. That high-priced number you used to bust the retrieval squad back in the day was high-end to you, but still pretty darn archaic for us."

"Still cooked your goose back then, though," noted Mulch.

Foaly gave him a dirty look. "Er… yes, I suppose. Anyway, these taping devices – CCTV, camcorders, whatever you want – essentially do one thing: translate a real, visual image to a picture equivalent. Long story short, if a conversion has happened via Mud Man electronics, it means that something was lost along the way. Always. That's where that little baby comes in." He pointed towards Holly's helmet. "It sweeps the disk for residual data rubbed off in translation, static, magnetic, what have you, and compiles it into an image. There's no guesswork involved here, since we're cobbling together real data – think less like reading between the lines and more like reading the writing indentation marks on the 2nd or 3rd sheet in a pad of paper. I could even collect magnetic ruboff from the actual camera, if you had it, but it looks like we'll just have to make do with the disk."

Artemis nodded in professional admiration. "Absolutely astonishing, Foaly. And what does your frame-extrapolation show?"

"Just one second while I call it up…"

The centaur's words tapered off as the image developed on the screen, an uncharacteristically serious look replacing his cocky grin. "Oh, D'Arvit," he cursed.

Holly was reaching the end of her rope. "Cut the theatrics. What do you see?"

A ping sounded as the file transferred through to Artemis' laptop. OPEN? It prompted. Yes.

The file contained a sequence of scenes, presumably taken within the 1.14 timeframe of the actual kidnapping proper. But this breakdown was different – beside the shots taken from the camera were two green-framed pictures, one before each screenshot and one after: the extrapolated images. It was remarkable really, thought Artemis. The uncompensated quality of the pictures boasted the exact same resolution as their official predecessors. The black and white footage depicted the explosion of glass and water, frozen for screenshot after screenshot until – _there._

"Foaly, can you compensate this for me?"

The centaur shook his head, looking a little dismayed. "Uh, no. Trouble's got to okay it first. Apparently we don't want to put anything there that might not have been there in the first place." He snorted. "You over-compensate a speck of dust just _one time _and suddenly you're 'tampering with the evidence'. Ahem. Anyway. Here, I'll enlarge it for you."

A few commands later, one particular image was magnified on Artemis' computer, still showing remarkable resolution. The zoomed-in scene showed the exact same image as all the frames that preceded it: the recoiling patrons, the traveling glass, Myles' huddled and cringing heap on the herringbone floor, the priceless chandeliers in mid-swing.

And then: in a corner of the relative chaos, what was unmistakably the outline of a beautiful dress, topped by Sabine's dark-haired head, half-in and half-out of the tall window. And in plain view of the camera, one slender, unknown arm, dragging the young girl out.

By the next frame, both girl and mysterious arm were completely gone – and all before one shard of glass had touched the floor.

"Oh gods," breathed Holly.

Artemis moved closer to the screen, scrutinizing the incriminating appendage carefully. Slender, small-fingered, fine-boned; likely a female's.

"It's human," said Holly. "Look at the size."

"That may be true," countered Artemis, tapping the screen. "But look here. A prominent nub on the back of the shoulder. Vestigial, perhaps. And definitely not humanoid."

Holly bit her bottom lip as Mulch edged in closer for a glimpse of their mysterious kidnapper, a chicken bone protruding from his mouth. Foaly winced at the missed clue. "You're right, Artemis, though it kills me to say it. A small protrusion on the shoulder blade, vestigial. There should a mirroring one on the opposite shoulder."

"Not human," concluded Holly, absently thinking of the twin nubs on her own upper back.

"Correct," agreed Artemis. "It appears as though our kidnapper is a fairy."

* * *

_Reading's not a spectator sport, guys. Think you have super plot ideas in mind? Pairing requests? Please drop me a line!_


	4. A Walk On The Wild Side

**Disclaimer: **AF is the property of Eoin Colfer. I'm merely taking them for a spin.

* * *

**Fowl Secondary Mansion, Dublin, Ireland**

Foaly had volunteered to speak to Trouble regarding the new evidence, leaving the trio to their own devices until his return.

The atmosphere in the main dining room was incredibly tense. Mulch, in a typical fashion, went about his usual business despite the heavy mood – helping himself to plates of this and glasses of that, all the while disseminating a few snide comments at his comrades' noticeable lack of zeal. Holly, in a similarly typical fashion, definitely wasn't holding back in reprimanding the ex-convict, at one point threatening to knock him unconscious with her Neutrino and tie him with his own boot strings to the rain pipe outside. Even Artemis tugged once or twice at his blue paisley tie, no doubt deep in thought regarding the issues of their findings.

"Of course," he commented thoughtfully, almost to himself. "It's unlikely that Commander Kelp will refuse aid or even involvement on this case, when the evidence is almost irrefutable."

Mulch snorted. "_Irrefutable? _More like practically slapping him in the face. He'd better, if he knows what good for him."

"Mulch, you know as well as I do that Trouble's a great commander," retorted Holly, coming to her friend's aid. "And Artemis, there's no _we_ here." She gestured at the pictures on the wall, ones Juliet had put up of Artemis and his family (and the two Butlers themselves), the papers on his desk, the unheard answering machine messages from acquaintances flashing red on the phone. "Apparently, you've got a life now, surprising as that may be, and I think you should just live it. Let us deal with this."

Artemis would hear none of this. "Absolutely not, Holly. If you do not recall, it was my younger brother who called for my aid on this case. I intend to exhaust all my available resources in order to find him some answers. Besides," he smirked. "I hardly think this search will be as successful without my interference. I found it first, after all."

Holly narrowed her eyes at him. A warning.

Mulch looked between the two, amused. "Oh, please. You're not going to fight, are you? 'Cause the smart money's obviously on Holly." He considered. "Well, unless it was a debate. Then you'd be an idiot to bet on her."

Thankfully, the screen flickered back on before any blood was shed.

Holly rushed over to the monitor. "Well?"

"My, you're happy to see me," grinned Foaly. "It's alright, I have that effect on people."

He shut up when she slammed both palms on the table. "_The briefing, _Foaly. Now."

"Okay, okay." Foaly inched visibly away from the camera. "Well, I've gone over the footage again and as Artemis pointed out, the arm most definitely belongs to a female."

Oh no. "Opal Koboi?" _Please_, thought Holly. _Let me be wrong_.

"No. There's no way. Her pituitary gland implantation has been creating a few health problems for her recently. An enlarged heart, if I remember right. So she's been put under strict medical watch, and it looks like they're succeeding in reversing the damage. However, Opal's stuck with the med team for round-the-clock surveillance, so it looks like she'll be there for a while yet. At least if she wants to get better. Plus, she's been petitioning for her release like clockwork, so we know it's really her in there." Foaly frowned. "It looks like we're up against a new evil."

Holly considered. "Then what about the whole human-sized thing? A cross-breed, maybe? These days it's taboo, but still possible, right?"

Artemis answered her question. "Though my research into the People's historical texts suggests that this was once definitely genetically feasible and may still be, I have my reasons to believe that we are _not _dealing with a hybrid."

"And exactly how did you get access to said texts?" Foaly asked disapprovingly.

Artemis coughed, opting not to answer this. He adjusted the wall projection to a more appropriate height (he had gotten quite tall, Holly noticed) and walked over, tapping a pen against the visible bone nub displayed on the extrapolated image. "Humans do not possess the vestigial wing joint – this one here is clearly as pronounced as your own, Holly. Additionally, the structures present in the upper arm may be similar, but this isn't so for the forearm. Notice that it's narrower here, suggesting lighter bone mass for any flight capabilities the People once possessed. And in addition to that, there appears to be two muscles straddling the elbow – likely to lock and protect the joint during a difficult healing."

Foaly shook his head. "Still, that doesn't provide an airtight case for a pure-breed. It's an objective diagnosis."

"I am aware. However, this certainly does." Artemis stood up and keyed in a command. The image zoomed and focused in on an almost invisible trail of blood that traced a line down the upper arm. Tiny, blurred particles appeared to dam its path. "Magical sparks, if I'm not mistaken."

It was all terribly logical, of course. But that didn't mean it made sense. Holly shook her head. "So what, Artemis? One day, a fairy just accidentally grew a little bigger than the rest? That's a _lot_ bigger. A _lot_. Something's clearly going on here."

Artemis glanced at over at the centaur on the display. "I have my theories, Holly, but from Foaly's lack of protestation at my fairy accusation, I presume he will be able to explain it to you at length."

"Er – right. Nothing gets past you, eh, Artemis?"

The young man made a gracious gesture.

"Any day now," interrupted Holly, crossing both arms expectantly.

"Well, Opal's last scheme with the pituitary implant had me thinking. HGH, or human growth hormone, can create tons of problems with excessive growth in internal body structures – specifically the heart and reproductive organs."

Artemis nodded. "Hypersomia. Gigantism."

"Exactly, kind of like the issues Opal's dealing with now. So instead of something that blindly tells the body to grow with no specific design or intent, why not rewire everything? Have everything tailored to a specific goal. A rewritten genetic code makes more sense, of course, one that would ideally occupy the user's cells for a set period of time, attach itself to the existing DNA and suppress the relevant genes before expressing their own. Then they'd safely disappear, causing the subject to revert to his or her original form."

Mulch gulped down a piece of breaded shrimp. "That's a lot of thinking. Sure you didn't hurt yourself?"

Foaly gave him a withering look. "Anyway. Five years might not be enough for Artemis to grow a decent beard, but it's more than enough time for my lab to come up with considerable breakthroughs in research." He grinned. "Post-maturity gene alteration, strictly for recon purposes only, with safer vectors. Induces growth and needed organ alteration. Patent pending, of course." He winked at Artemis.

The young man nodded, taking a mental note. "The vectors. Viral, are they?"

Holly's patience was wearing painfully thin. "Yes, no, maybe so. Can we move on?"

"Testy today?" Foaly caught Holly's look. "—Ah, to answer your question, Artemis: nope, and maybe if the patent goes through, you and I could sit down and chat about the ingenious alternative I managed to dig up. But in a nutshell, we've had the go for a fourth clinical trial of the cocktail since last April."

Mulch burped loudly. "Sounds like you'd be a little stretched after turning back."

"Er – that _was _a problem for the first round of trials. We spent a fortune in cosmetic tucks. Like I said, it hasn't been perfected yet. The decently working mix we've got only goes with a full healing right after growth and following the reversion. It solves the stretch problem."

Holly scoffed, swiping a bottle of water out of Artemis' hand in mid-sip. "Sounds bogus to me."

"Hardly," answered Artemis, a little miffed. He went to the kitchen for another bottle of Irish spring water. "Logically speaking, the gene must be able to enlarge organs to compensate for the change in weight. I presume Foaly would not omit a step so integral to the subject's survival."

The centaur scoffed. "_Presume? _Oh please, Fowl. Don't insult me."

Artemis rewarded this with a rare grin. "This is simple for internal organs, but the skin is a different matter entirely. Even if the size of the skin is altered to compensate for a weight change factor, there is no guarantee that it may necessarily fit. One humanoid creature weighing the same as another may still possess a noticeably different physiology. This could be due to a number of factors: the variation of fat and muscle concentration, differing bone proportions, even bad posture."

"I see," lied Holly. Mulch winked at her appreciatively.

"In short," supplemented Foaly. "Different bits stick out on different folks. So we've got to have a few zaps of magic to make sure everything tucks in nicely at the end of the day."

Mulch groaned; even the dumbed-down version of all this science was giving him a headache. "So, the moral of the story is that it can be done. Right?"

Foaly huffed indignantly. "No, you plebe. What I'm saying is that millions of hurdles in this overwhelmingly complicated area were overcome, boundaries unbroken were pushed at, sweat was sweated, labs were irreparably damaged in the empirical process, and all so –"

"— So it can be done," Mulch finished for him, twirling a chicken bone through his fingers like a baton.

"Er… Yes. So it can be done."

"I can't believe you, Foaly," said Holly in disgust. "How could let something like this get out?"

"I didn't. At least, not that I can recall," replied the centaur. "But here's the thing: it was a suggestion by one of my lesser scientists that we put this kind of plan into action. Naturally, I had thought of it ages ago, but didn't go through with it."

Mulch raised an eyebrow. "Why not? I thought you'd be slobbering all over another patent like this."

Foaly whinnied indignantly. "Like Holly said, human-esque transformation ranks up there with human-fairy relations: it's fairly taboo. I guess my nub and thrust is that the idea might have been floating around for a while, at least if Dr. Peat managed to figure that out – the guy has trouble with tachyons, for Frond's sake."

"Almost common knowledge, then," said Artemis, who had been listening to all this with a distinctly troubling gleam in his eye. "It would be ludicrous to assume that no one present Underground would even think of putting it into action."

"Probably not," said Foaly, rather dodgily. "But that's a _probably_." The entire room what this meant: when Foaly admitted to any likelihood, the probability of it being true rose nearly exponentially.

Holly took a sip of her stolen water, suppressing a shiver. "Turning into a human. Sounds horrible."

Across the table, the centaur wrung his hairy hands. "Then you're probably not going to like what I'm about to say next."

* * *

**Police Plaza, Lower Elements; Earlier that Day**

"Oh gods," said a very stressed-looking Trouble Kelp. "It's you."

"Now, Trouble," tutted Foaly. "Is that any way to greet your one-of-a-kind, handsome, genius centaur extraordinaire?"

Trouble rolled his eyes. "I'm guessing this is a lead on the Fowl incident?"

"The latest one, yes. Is this a bad time?"

"More than you know," answered the Commander, rubbing his eyes. "But that won't change for the next few weeks at the very least. I haven't slept in two days. The goblins committed their first act of unified decision ever: they're trying to rock the boat a little harder down at Howler's Peak. All those goblins in one place – there are fireballs up through the ducts at all hours, Foaly, it's a nightmare."

It was more than a nightmare. The reason fireballs were generally prohibited was because they were composed of unique blend of gases ignited by the friction between the goblins' fingers – gases that, near a chute or tunnel, could easily be released above ground. You see, a goblin's fire was unique to their race, their own breed of magic. And magic, as everyone knew, had an affinity for itself.

So, in addition to causing myriad problems with the ozone, the escaped gases had a nasty tendency of grouping towards any magical being above ground (this explained halos or auras around fairyfolk seen in human folklore). In and of itself, this wasn't the main issue – you'd smell somewhat smoky for your aboveground stint, but outside of that, there were no serious repercussions. Unless you had a whole bunch of gases gathered in one place.

And then you shielded.

Then, the vibration would send the gaseous molecules thrumming at twice their usual velocity, inducing them to violent, strange-hued flames. This strange phenomenon had caused the destruction of many a city throughout history. Foaly could still remember the day when Rennes had gone up in blazes. The whole of North-West Europe smelled of burnt crepe for _days_.

"We'll get it all under control eventually. But that 'eventually' still means a lot of sleepless nights at the office. Shielding is banned aboveground, by the way." Trouble shook his head. "No, really, Foaly. _Totally_ banned, so make sure Holly knows. I've had 1,049 phonecalls in the last hour from tourists wondering why their vacations have been postponed. Not to mention the Council's been jumping down my throat for authorizing the overtime payments for the officers that were stuck down there with me."

"Bureaucrats," agreed Foaly. He was starting to see exactly why Julius had always been so red.

"Tell me about it. So how about some good news for me?"

The centaur paused nervously. "Well… That depends on what your definition of 'good news' happens to be."

Trouble sighed, his desk phone ringing. He hit the _ignore_ button with a vengeance. "That bad, huh?"

"You have no idea."

When Foaly had finished relaying the details of their recent finds to Trouble, the only sound that could be heard was the occupied tone of the Commander's phone.

"D'Arvit," he breathed, a moment later.

A sharp rapping was heard from the door, breaking the brief spell of despair that hung heavily in the office. "Commander Kelp," called the slightly harassed-sounding voice of the Plaza secretary, Pepper Smart. "The press, Sir. They're being quite insistent on having a word with you."

Trouble rubbed his eyes. "Send them away, Pepper. I'll arrange for a press call on the Howler's Peak situation first thing tomorrow."

"Er, Sir…"

"What is it, Pepper?"

"It's just that you called for a press call first thing _yesterday_. For today. Ten minutes ago, in fact. It's why they're all at the Plaza, Sir."

Trouble groaned, flicking today's date on his desktop calendar – it had been a congratulations gift from Holly. It also read HP PRESS CONF. in bold, red letters.

"D'Arvit." He opened the door briefly, where the fairly diminutive secretary was physically blocking a herd of larger reporters from barreling down the door. Foaly chuckled at the sight of it. "Alright, give me five more minutes, folks," Trouble said, taking Pepper's arm and pulling her into his office. "And watch that you don't stampede Miss Smart." He shut the door on their protesting faces.

Pepper waved at Foaly through the comm. line. Trouble turned back to face him, a sudden glint in his eyes that looked more than a little reckless. A throwback to the good old days.

"Alright. I'll take time to digest this all later, but I trust you, Foaly. And I trust Holly. Let that be known. In light of that, I'm going to do something that I shouldn't and give you unlimited clearance for this mission. Three weeks – and then I'll have this fiasco cleaned up and I'll send a full recon/retrieval squad to look into this."

Pepper opened up the file on the desk and whipped out a large stamp that really shouldn't have fit in her back pocket. She began furiously stamping the sheets for the mission's approval as Trouble went on.

"Unorthodox as it may be, I'm leaving the decision-making up to the two of you and, gods help us, Artemis Fowl. Put that big brain of yours to work and watch out for his tricks – we won't be abetting any of his moneymaking schemes." Pepper's head swiveled back and forth between Foaly's screen and Trouble's face. "You've got full lab access, weaponry, anything short of a bio-bomb or blue-rinse. We can't spare the administration needed for anything as big as a time stop, but seeing as this is a fairly high risk situation, I can give you one or two team's worth of backup _with_ reasonable notice. Keep in mind, first and foremost, we need information."

"Reconnaissance above ground with the shielding ban?" Foaly asked. It would be impossible, really. Unless… Foaly grimaced. "Oh no. You mean the growth cocktail."

"You tell me, Foaly. Is it safe? Safe enough to use on Holly and Mulch?"

The centaur took a moment to mull this over while the pounding on Trouble's door grew in ferocity. "Yes, absolutely. Sure, a little more testing would be ideal, Trouble, but logically, it's been good to go since the first test run. If there are any problems, we can think on our feet. Fowl might not be good for much, but he's got a pretty big brain on his shoulders."

Trouble sighed while Pepper drew the deadbolt. "_Logically _never won a bucket of squid in Gnommish roulette, Foaly. If you lose my best officer or my best underground contact, I'll personally come knocking on your door."

* * *

**12 Hours Later**

**Fowl Secondary Mansion, Dublin, Ireland**

Holly dragged delicate fingers over her cheeks while the contents of her stomach rocked and roiled, threatening to make a surprise re-appearance. The last time she had felt this awful was when the captain of a recent training shuttle launch had lost consciousness. In the time it had taken to wrestle off her harness and take hold of the controls, nearly all the passengers had managed to lose their lunches in the zero-G chamber. Not pretty.

"Sorry, Holly," apologized Foaly in a rare moment, patting her awkwardly on the back. Foaly _never _apologized. That's when you knew it was bad.

"No," she said, waving a hand. "It's okay. I totally get it. With the goblin gas and… rioting and stuff. No aboveground shielding. Trouble made a good choice." That still didn't stop her from resenting it, though. Especially when racked by violent waves of spatial nausea and dizzy spells, not to mention the distinct feeling of her skin expanding around her body, shots of magic sparks playing around each sudden extension. It was a good thing Foaly had flown up here himself, or she would have pounded whatever lab lackey he sent right back down to Haven for making her feel this way. The blue light, coupled with her strangely unfocused vision, made her head spin like a whirligig. It was like the now-abolished entrance spell – except a hundred times worse.

Holly banged a growing hand on the counter, convincing herself between growth spurts. "_I_._ Understand._"

Mulch looked over from where he was parked on the couch, watching television. "Oh. Is that why you're retching into the sink, then?"

"You mean, instead of wringing your stupid neck?" retorted Holly, holding back a retch for the parting shot. "Bleagh."

"Kinetosis," said Artemis, handing her a warm, wet cloth. "Commonly known as motion sickness. That explains the nausea. The blurriness is an interruption with the vestibulo-ocular reflex – your eyes are having trouble centering the image on your retinas. Perhaps due to the sudden expansion of the vestibular system, retina or the combination of both."

Holly shot him a withering, sidelong glance. "Oh my gods, you're serious, aren't you? You're actually trying to make me feel better."

"Scientifically," inserted Mulch, a tad unnecessarily. "Gee Arty, you're a real poet."

"You're next, Mulch," warned Foaly, filling the dwarf's intended syringe with evil glee. "So laugh while you still can."

Artemis looked Holly over. "Based on my calculations, it looks like you're almost finished the transformation. Judging from your previous height relative to fairy average, and the average Northern European female height, and it looks you'll hit peak at 5"3."

"How very clinical of you," Holly snapped sarcastically. But it was true; her vision stopped rocking for longer bouts now and the nausea was even beginning to subside. Artemis was right. As always.

The young man bristled. "I'm just trying to –"

"Cool it, you two," chided Foaly, rummaging through the trunk old family clothes that Artemis had had Juliet bring over hours prior. In the meantime, both Holly and Mulch were wearing two of Artemis' old bathrobes, both of which were much too large for them (even after Holly's nearly completed growth), the hems and sleeves of the garments falling farther than they were supposed to. Foaly held up a pink cashmere v-neck sweater. "Hey Holly, what do you think? _Very_ girl next door."

She rinsed her face under the tap (only grimacing briefly at the taste of chlorine in the water), before stomping over and snatching the garment from the chuckling centaur. "Ha ha. I'd never be able to hide my gun in this." Holly rummaged through the pile for a moment. "Skirt, dress, capris, skirt. Neon leggings? Skirt. Ugh, Juliet may be practiced at running around in these things, but I'm not." She turned to Artemis. "Artemis, where's your closet?"

He looked slightly bemused. "Bedroom, down the west hall, fourth door on your right."

"Got it," replied the elf, before tossing a sarcastic salute to Mulch. "Have fun, Diggums. Call me when the painful stomach heaves start – OW."

Holly, usually a rather graceful stepper, had somehow managed to walk straight into the wall rather than the door. Artemis raised an eyebrow at this.

She caught his look and rubbed her bruised nose bitterly. No sparks came forth to heal the injury. "It's not me, it's these stupid legs. I can't seem to control them. I _was_ aiming for that door… it just wasn't there when I got there."

Foaly looked kind of guilty. "Oh. Um, it looks like your spatial awareness might be a little affected. We had that in the trial runs, too. Coupled with the sudden growth, you're like a kid in über-puberty; all those inches and no idea of the dimensions."

"And her magic?" Asked Artemis, the lack of sparks having not missed his notice.

Holly gaped at the two of them. "My magic, too?"

"Just temporarily," soothed Foaly. "We had that with a few test trials, but it should return soon."

Artemis glanced at Holly's horrified expression before turning back to the centaur. "How soon, exactly?"

Foaly's flippant shrug made Holly's blood run cold. Artemis frowned. "Alright, we'll simply have to account for this fact in our immediate plans."

Holly was far less accepting. "So I've lost my lunch, probably everything I've eaten for the past two days, my magic… my _balance_? What next, Foaly? Am I going to experience terrible human-esque cravings to pillage and pollute as much as I can?"

Artemis glanced at her with a brief smirk. "Should I be welcoming you to the dark side?"

Holly glared daggers at him. "Don't make me hit you, Mud Boy." This was a fine time for Artemis to develop a sense of humor.


	5. Karmacoma

**AN: **I know the mysterious Sinister Organization (dum dum dum) doesn't make a very brainy or stylish first appearance here. I'm lacking in inspiration. They get eviller, I assure you ;). Also, one million thanks to reviews. Please drop me a line if you like this!

**Disclaimer: **AF is the property of Eoin Colfer, etc.

* * *

/

* * *

**Fowl Secondary Mansion, Dublin, Ireland**

"You know," said Juliet, tugging a rolling rack of garments behind her. "This is second time in the same day that you've asked me for women's clothes."

Artemis looked up from his computer. "Oh, it's for a… er… friend."

Juliet had been smack-dab in the middle of the third WWF championship fight when Artemis had called her, instructing her to contact all the big-name designers for women's formal wear, sizes 00 – 2, before abruptly hanging up. She was still blinking at the phone when it rang again, with Artemis' number on the call display.

"Juliet, I apologize for ringing twice. Please request shoes – er, smaller sizes, if you will – and arrange for appropriate jewelry as well."

Now this was in no way a terrible burden; Juliet had done similarly for Mrs. Fowl numerous times before. It was a simple matter of calling up all the newest designers and letting them know there was a gala or charity benefit on – usually they would have a piece or two on hand provided you could shell out the appropriate funds. This, predictably, was never a problem for the Fowls. Sometimes, Juliet would even get to keep the discarded dresses. But as far as Juliet was concerned, Mrs. Fowl was a size 6 and wore a size 8 shoe, not exactly the extremely smaller-end sizes Artemis had requested.

But however short Juliet might have been on patience (given that it was the Termacrusher's first fight back since his knee injury, after all), she knew better than to question her young employer. His plans usually chose to reveal themselves at the very last minute – a fact that was usually pivotal to their success.

"A friend? Artemis, I hadn't prepared the guestroom…"

"Yes. Not to worry, we are currently using the master bathroom. Thank you for bringing these over, Juliet, I greatly appreciate your efforts."

The older girl blinked at him in surprise. "The master bathroom…?" Sure, it was big and swanky, but it seemed like an odd place to entertain guests, if you asked her.

"Juliet, will you kindly place the rack in the elevator? I'm just finishing up here; I'll bring them up myself."

"So she's here?" Juliet grinned; she had seen some of the braver young heiresses try for a crack at the Fowl fortune, but Artemis had never brought any them over. This was a rare occasion, indeed. It ranked right up there with turning lead into gold and meeting a unicorn. "Could I meet her?"

A ping sounded as the elevator door arrived on the first floor, the metal doors sliding open smoothly. Artemis finished closing up the information he was observing on his computer and made his way over to the elevator. Catching the quizzical look on Juliet's face, he finally registered her question and blinked at her, momentarily unsure of how to answer. "Excuse me?"

For a genius, Artemis could be very dense sometimes_. _"Could. I. Meet. Her? Your friend?"

Artemis frowned. "No, absolutely not. Now, Juliet, if you'll kindly just place the rack into the elevator, you can go home right—"

One more ping sounded as the elevator door slid shut in front of Artemis. Unfortunately for him, both Juliet and the rack of clothes made it through first.

"Thanks Artemis!" She called sweetly through the steel doors. "I'll see you on the third floor!"

* * *

/

**Police Plaza, Haven City, Lower Elements**

"Carrot!"

Private Bean scowled darkly at Foaly before reaching into the bucket at his feet and passing him the requested vegetable.

Bean happened to be the green little rookie du jour doing Foaly-apprenticeship. The standard punishment for insubordination counts that endangered officers, civilians and good chunk of Haven. Ha, thought Foaly, taking a big bite of his carrot. Typical LEP jock swagger.

Maybe in a couple of years, Bean would be a good officer, but this whole post-Academy swag was something that simply wouldn't do. Even Trouble, notorious in the history books for his own particular brand of joie de vivre, realized this. So Foaly had suggested that what these cocky rookies needed, in his humble opinion, was a good swift kick in the backside with the boot of humility. Something he assured the Commander would be available in veritable droves during a brief stint in the Ops centre.

Truthfully, Foaly just liked having a helper around every couple of weeks or so.

Once he had given Mulch his dose of the drug and oversaw the first half of the subsequent transformation, Foaly was paged by an increasingly angry Trouble to return to monitoring the electronic security around the mounting situation at Howler's Peak. A centaur's work was never done. A brief discussion with Artemis surprisingly revealed that the young man had no intention of going against Trouble's recon plans for the Galibois' party; in fact, Artemis agreed that it would be the best course of action.

Which, naturally, had Foaly suspicious in the blink of an eye. "You want to run that by me again, Mud Spawn?"

"Foaly, you needn't look at me like that," sighed Artemis in a long-suffering way. "I can assure you that my only intentions for this entire mission are to find my brother's friend and to bring her home safely."

Needless to say, Artemis' words were usually about as good as a three-day old hunk of meat left out in the sun, but there was nothing for it at the time – duty called. Foaly would just have to remain extra vigilant on the above-ground proceedings in the meantime.

Next, he had presented an array of suitable disguises for Mulch and Holly, all in the hopes of making their spy strategy run smoothly. When the loose bundle of auburn strands Foaly held to Holly's head immediately combined with her own short cut to form a perfectly natural-looking head of hair, Artemis looked distinctly intrigued.

"No drooling over the inventions, Fowl," Foaly told him with a chuckle. "Awesome, though, isn't it? Mechanized roots modeled after those of dwarf hairs; they bind with the upper part of the hair shaft and wind tightly around them. _Super_ tight. You're going to have to cut these babies off."

Holly gave him a dirty look beneath disheveled-looking bangs. "I'm going to have to cut this anyway; it's all choppy and different lengths."

Artemis nodded. "I'll make sure to call a hairdresser."

"No thanks, Mud Boy. I'm perfectly capable of cutting my own hair."

He raised an eyebrow at her comment. "And exactly how well are you going to blend in with a haircut that falls under the 200 Euro mark?"

The mouthful of water Mulch was drinking promptly exited his nose. "_Excuse me?_"

"Charming," commented Artemis drily, wiping off his wet tie.

"That's a disgusting amount to spend on a few snips," Holly crossed her arms in dismay. "Think of the people you could feed with that!"

Artemis opened his cell phone. "There's nothing for it. It will simply have to be done, or our cover is blown. Foaly, I presume you have something else for her?"

"Right," answered the centaur. He took out the hazel contact lens he had brought with him. "That new heterochromia you've got going on there is a little too noticeable. So we're covering it. Gives us our eyes, too. For our ears…" He popped out a small device. "Brilliant little thing, this… relays all the usual information, perfect sound quality, except it's about an eighth of the size of the last one you laid your eyes on, Artemis."

"Brilliant, of course. Thank you Foaly," Artemis commended, sparing the device a brief look. "We shall stay in touch."

And that was that. One shuttle ride later, to Foaly's sheer delight, Private Bean had been waiting for him outside of Trouble's office, looking vaguely chagrined. Let the games begin, thought Foaly. Let the games begin.

"You know, Private – " He waved around the half-eaten carrot, making a big show of recollection. "Er… Fill me in here?"

"—Bean," answered the young officer, through gritted teeth.

"Green Bean? String Bean?"

"_Lance_. Lance Bean."

Foaly suppressed a grin at the vein throbbing in the Private's left temple. Oh, he got him good. "Right, right. Anyway, you're pretty young, aren't you? Sixty? Sixty five?"

"Seventy, sir." The elf looked about ready to strangle him.

"'Course. Plenty young enough for some good ole' elbow grease." Foaly pointed to the mangled wreck of machinery occupying a dangerously large corner of the Ops booth. Old castaway model parts that Foaly intended on reusing. Once they were cleaned, of course. "Want to do me a favour and polish those off?"

Private Bean shot him a looked that would have withered roses. If roses grew Underground. "I am in no position to say no, Sir."

"No," observed Foaly, grinning around a mouthful of his almost-finished carrot. "You really aren't. Polish like you mean it, Beanie. 'Til they're shining. Don't let me down."

Which was exactly when, as luck would have it, karma came and walloped our centaur right in the hairy backside. And good.

When the sirens started going off outside the booth, Foaly nearly choked on his carrot. "Attention, Havenites," said a cheerily smooth female voice. "Attention Havenites… You are witnessing a revolution."

A yellow-backed image with a small cartoon representation of the earth filled each and every one of the Ops Booth screens. The _secured_ Ops Booth screens. Foaly quickly coughed up the offending mouthful of vegetable and scrambled for the main computer like a centaur possessed. Viciously tugging the keyboard from its sliding drawer, he began typing. In the back corner, Private Bean watched the screens, perplexed.

The _secured _visual screens, thought Foaly. This particular mainframe's communications were strictly limited to outgoing, only. The only incoming line was his portable laptop, which boasted the same garish picture as all the other transmission screens. Some sewage-munching moron had hacked the system. _His _system.

Foaly bit his lip – there was no ready command to block the intrusion; a situation like this was simply _not _supposed to ever happen. Ever. He'd have to write up an entirely new system on the fly to block the incoming data, and Frond knew how long the hackers would keep probing the booth. No, that wouldn't do.

Fine then, the consolation prize. Calling up a program, Foaly entered: DIRECTIONAL TRACE, the computer taking a few precious seconds to relay the information. Four seconds, five.

D'Arvit. Foaly had been mid-way through a sweep upgrade before being called above-ground to administer the growth cocktail to Holly and Mulch. Totally routine, four times a year. Unfortunately, this meant that the program had reverted to its earlier operating mode in upgrade limbo during the interim. Foaly hadn't spared it a second thought – this wasn't ever supposed to happen, after all.

Figures he'd be running on a lower system on the one and only day it mattered. Karma, much? He'd have to start treating people nicer.

SOUTH-SOUTH WEST… DATA PROCESSING, PLEASE WAIT.

"You are on the brink of a revolution," continued the pleasant, shuttle-announcement voice in the background. "Please sit back and enjoy."

Just another moment, prayed Foaly, a bead of sweat trickling down his snout. One more moment and I swear I'll never leave a prototype program's upgrade until the last minute ever again. Ever. Just keep talking. Keep talking for one more second and I've got you.

The screens blinked off unceremoniously, as sudden as they had come.

"D'Arvit!" Swore Foaly, looking to check whether or not the data sweep had taken.

INCOMPLETE, it read, like some doomsday prophesy. Foaly stamped a hoof on the ground. Great. This was brilliant.

The forgotten Private Bean gave a macho sounding cough from behind him. "Can I ask what's the matter, or is that against the rules?"

Foaly didn't have time for this. "It was a transmission, Lance. That somebody relayed over _entirely private_ lines to this _entirely private_ booth. That means someone out there is probably watching over everything we're doing right now." Fine, so it was a little bit of an exaggeration, but a little paranoia in the mix never hurt anybody.

"So are you going to catch them?" Asked Private Bean, considerably less than fazed at the prospect of being bugged. "Tech is your specialty, right? We _are _counting on you, _Sir_."

Foaly rolled his eyes, making a mental note to somehow punish Bean for this later – heck, he had him for the next two weeks. Foaly had dreamt up far more terrible tasks in less time. First things first, however.

Foaly immediately opened a communication line to the Plaza. He might be interrupting a press conference, but there was no way the Commander wouldn't want to hear about this.

* * *

/

**Fowl Secondary Mansion, Dublin, Ireland**

Holly had been happily listening to Mulch's medically induced quakes and convulsions when the door to the master bathroom burst open.

She sprung to her feet, on the brink of shielding save for some small logical part of her brain that advised against it. It wouldn't have worked anyway; she had felt the magic leaching from her body all throughout the ritual, exponentially magnifying the distinct feeling of nausea. She was almost human, now; dry as a bone. Instead Holly tugged on her long pants, widening her stance before raising both hands. A fighting stance.

Juliet, who had been the sudden invader in question, gasped and rushed over, taking both Holly's hands in her own (only half noticing that the new girl in question was wearing one of her own old tank tops and Artemis' drawstring pajama pants). "You can fight?" She glanced back towards the door, where a very peeved and panting Artemis entered with considerably less gusto. "She can fight!"

"Yes," he huffed. "Obviously. Now, if you'll kindly –"

The blonde girl extended a hand, where a noticeably large diamond engagement ring dwelled on the ring finger. "I'm Juliet Butler. Almost family; nice to meet you. Hey, haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

This is it, thought Holly, wincing. If this doesn't trigger total recall, then I don't know what will. After all the problems they were already causing for Trouble on this elicit mission, now they'd have one more insanely dangerous human running around with knowledge of their existence. She'd _really _have to buy him dinner one of these days. "I… just have that kind of face."

Juliet giggled. "No… Well, maybe it was a competition or something. You'll have to tell me what you practice later. Sorry, what was your name again?"

Holly glanced at the floor, where a discarded shirt lay. The tag read Moireaux Vintage. "Er… Moira. Moira Short."

Juliet followed her shifty gaze to the floor, where she briefly spotted the shirt.

"Juliet," interjected Artemis, while Holly discreetly reached out a foot and kicked the offending garment under the bed. "My friends and I have several things to discuss, so if you could kindly leave us alone..."

"Artemis, I haven't introduced myself to your other friend yet." She glanced at the tiny, hairy man standing in the corner and smiled. "Juliet, Mister. You're Artemis' friend?"

Mulch grinned at the light-haired girl, his one-time companion. "In a manner of speaking." His introduction, however, was cut short as he gave an involuntary dry heave, causing Juliet to step back several inches.

Artemis pressed a hand to his temple. "Juliet, if you would please –"

"Are you sick?" She asked the smaller man.

This was getting close. The majority of Mulch's growth spurts had subsided, but they only needed one before Juliet's mind wipe might be broken. "Yes, he is," Holly answered weakly. Lying to her friends always made her feel ill. Or maybe that was just the growth cocktail. "Old Uncle Morty loves his chili. Even though it doesn't love him. Ha, ha." Even Holly looked unconvinced at her own explanation.

"Ohhhh," replied Juliet, winking in comprehension. She turned to leave with a friendly wave. "Anyway, Artemis, I'll go and give the seamstress a call and see if she's free. I hope you feel better, Mr. Morty. And, bye Moira. It was nice meeting you both."

"Likewise," answered Mulch, retching into the toilet. Holly gave the girl a weak smile.

As the doors shut behind her, Mulch wiped away a trace of vomit from his cheek with the back of a hairy hand and whistled. "That's a mighty pretty rock on her finger," he commented. "I've been meaning to get me one of those…"

Holly dropped her smile like a hot rock, looking equal parts uncomfortable and angry. "Some genius, Artemis," she said, moving to the door and locking it. "Couldn't you have called the _other_ Butler to help us today? You know, the one that _knows _about us?"

"Impossible," he answered, beginning to unzip the clothing protector bags that housed the tuxes and dresses. "In a sad turn of events, Butler has taken leave for this entire week to attend the funeral of his old teacher in Cheju Island. As such, he will not be back until this weekend at the very least, and I have no intention to rush him back here at such a time. It seems we'll simply be on patrol at the dinner party without him."

The rest of the team looked distinctly uncomfortable at this. When dealing with any unknown and (definitely) dangerous enemies, it always helped to have the mountainous Man at your back. Artemis gave a brief cough to dispell the heavy air of doubt gathering in the room. "In any case, it should be fine. We will only be doing basic reconnaissance on this mission, anyway. We'll have fairy technology, at least. In all the subsequent permutations I've run through in my head, everything should work out fine. Foaly's beliefs coincide with mine. He assured me we would be fine."

Mulch rolled his eyes in between two heaves. "Says the guy who gets to sit in the reinforced-to-the-teeth Ops booth all day long while we risk our necks."

A knock sounded at the door. "It'll be ten minutes before the seamstress gets over, alright guys?" Juliet called through the door.

Artemis checked his watch. "Thank you, Juliet. See you in ten minutes." He finished unzipping the first bag, unceremoniously tossing the exquisite garment it contained onto the chaise lounge beside Mulch. Artemis moved onto the next one, making quick work of removing all the outfits from their protectors.

The dwarf whistled, holding up a flowing, sea-green dress. "What I wouldn't give to tuck myself in with this at night. Chee. You don't get softer than this."

"That's a dress, Mulch," said Holly, swiping it out of his hands. "_You _get to wear _this_." She handed him one of the smaller-sized tuxes.

"That's no fun," pouted the dwarf. "It's wasted on you, anyway."

Holly opted to ignore him, instead inspecting each of the garments carefully. "Hold the cavalry, there's a problem."

Artemis glanced up from where he was busy signing the accompanying credit card bills. "And that would be?"

"My gun, genius. My old thigh holster doesn't fit me anymore and between all the lack of sleeves, floor-length hems and crazy tight waists, I don't really see any opportunity to hide my weapon."

Artemis frowned. "Yes, of course. Well, there are several problems I foresee with you remaining armed. Despite the fact that you are, undoubtedly, our very best mark, Holly, carrying weaponry into an event such as this one qualifies as a particularly bad idea. The long dress would make accessing any weapon we could feasibly conceal very difficult, in addition to the fact that we would needto cook up a reasonable excuse for Juliet to lend you her holster. There's no time to obtain a new on in your size before the gala, and I'm fairly sure you would have considerable trouble fitting into Butler's. Also, it is quite likely that there will be security scanning for concealed weapons – this kind of practice is fairly common these days, even in neighborhood high schools."

Mulch glanced out the window at the upper-class housing extending down the block. "Not _this _neighborhood, I reckon," he winked at Artemis.

"In short, keeping you armed with the Neutrino will prove immensely risky. It would be better if we keep strictly civilian throughout the recon. Also, Mulch, you needn't try that on." Artemis indicated the tux in the dwarf's arms. "I believe it will be best if you pose as something other than a guest, in case of an emergency. That way, we can conceal the weaponry with you nearby and obtain it as needed."

Holly considered. Artemis had a point, of course. Several of them. But the last time she was caught without a weapon, she had had the distinct displeasure of going up against a 400-pound gorilla, dragged Artemis tooth-and-nail back from Death's door and weathered three unwelcome tranqs in over less than as many days. And that was only the last time.

"No way, Artemis. I need a weapon at my side, or this show's over. Adjust your plans – " Holly glanced over at the ruffled piles of garments on the chaise lounge. "—And your dresses accordingly."

* * *

_... feed the author? _


	6. Swim With the Sharks

**Disclaimer: **Artemis Fowl is the property of Eoin Colfer.

**Author's Note: **The start of school had me sort of tied up. Sorry for the long wait.

* * *

**Chapter 5: Swim With the Sharks**

* * *

**Police Plaza, Lower Elements**

Commander Trouble Kelp slid his desk calendar over so he could get a better look at the centaur sitting in front of him. "So," he started, tugging at his shirt collar. "Would you like to tell me more about this mysterious transmission?"

Foaly cleared his throat loudly, placing a few printed reports on the desk between them. "Absolutely. At fourteen hundred hours and twenty-one minutes yesterday afternoon, a transmission was received throughout Haven via all plasma–"

Trouble shook his head. "—About how it happened?"

"Er… Though the content was… ambiguous, at best, it seems to have been a message delivered by what appears to be a radical –"

"— About how it happened over a supposedly secure and unhackable line in the centre of all our covert police operations?"

Foaly gave the Commander an indignant whinny. "Look, Trouble; it wasn't my technology. No way, uh-uh, absolutely out of the question. My Ops booth is _always_ kept on the edge of each technological advance, checked for obsoletion every day." He paused. "Almost every day."

Trouble looked up at him sharply. "I don't like the sound of that _almost_, Foaly."

"It's _not_ my machines."

Trouble considered him for a moment. "How often, then? The obsoletion checks."

The centaur considered. "Up until last month? Every day. Recently? Every other day, maybe down to three times a week. But that was that one time I had to attend Lamaze classes with Caballine. Trouble, believe me, obsoletion check or not, I definitely calibrated everything in that room that very morning. Those machines were purring like kittens when the message hit. Albeit possibly slightly out-of-date ones."

"So how about this," offered Trouble, scratching his neck. "You skipped the obsoletion check, right?"

Foaly didn't like where this was going. "As I was just wasting my breath assuring you. It was a rare, _rare_ occurrence."

"And didn't you throw a baby shower for Caballine just last month?"

"Er… yes."

Trouble frowned. "Where I'm guessing you went on to high heaven about what a miracle your baby-to-be was?"

"Er… well, it _would _be true, factually speaking…"

"So," Trouble continued. "Let's just figure this out. What are the chances that somebody knew you were going to be busy with Caballine's pregnancy right around this time here? That you might forget, say, an obsoletion check once, twice this week, maybe?"

"Once," stated Foaly obstinately, though he sighed as realization dawned upon him. "But, though I hate to say it, it's possible."

"Possible," repeated Trouble.

"But we're talking about one very tiny iota of possibility," clarified the centaur.

Trouble nodded. "A very tiny iota."

"But, yes. I _guess_ it might be possible."

"Ah."

The silence would have stretched on for an awkward eternity if Trouble's office hadn't swung open at that very moment, nearly flattening the Commander against the back wall and toppling the shelf there and its contents. Pepper barreled in half a millisecond later. "Commander! Where's Mr. Foaly?"

Trouble extracted himself from a fallen heap of reports and rubbed his sore nose. "Pepper, what in the –"

"I'm sorry, Commander," she apologized hastily, readjusting her glasses. "But Mr. Foaly has to come with me right away!"

"Pepper, can't you see we're –"

"It's Caballine, Sir, she's gone into labour!"

Trouble sighed, forgetting the issue of the transmission in order to smile brightly at his old friend. "Congratulations, Foaly. Looks like you're going to be a dad."

Said father-to-be was equal parts shocked and delighted beyond all compare. For once, he had nothing to say, except: "I guess I'll head over as soon as we're done–"

"NO!" Yelled the usually mild Pepper very suddenly, slamming both hands against the desk and rattling her glasses off her nose. "You're going to be a dad really, really soon, Mr. Foaly, so you're coming to the hospital with me right now!" She reached for his hand and tugged him through the door at a harried pace. "Sorry, Commander!" She yelled back through the door.

And then they were gone, Pepper hailing a cab and dragging the slightly befuddled Foaly behind her, leaving Commander Kelp with one very sore nose and a Haven-wide crisis to deal with alone.

* * *

**/**

* * *

**Outer Hall, ****Le Grand Casino de Monte Carlo, Monaco**

Holly was all sorts of miserable.

After enduring the degrading tussle that was the dress fitting, Holly had been even more frustrated to find the torture contraptions she was expected to wear with it.

Sure, Holly wasn't the most feminine young lady around – the amount of dresses in her rather sparse closet could be counted on exactly two fingers – but she _had _worn formal wear before to induction ceremonies, weddings and the like. But even then, practicality was first and foremost – cocktail dresses were an obviously good choice, giving her mobility in potentially bad situations (she had never been paranoid enough to wear a weapon to any of the above gatherings unless she was going undercover, but having a few well-aimed kicks on your side was never a bad thing). This, however? This was post-experimental-procedure nausea coupled with four-inch heels, a floor-sweeping hem and mascara; waiting to endure a night of stiff smiling at rich sharks and trying to protect the impossibly expensive carpets from the contents of her stomach. Forget heists and dangerous missions, this was something else _entirely._

Beside her, Artemis was muttering to himself, the permanent crease between his eyebrows a little deeper than usual.

"What are you moping about, Mud Boy?" asked Holly bitterly. "I don't see you wearing heels."

"No," he agreed, looking up at her with a vaguely troubled expression. "It's nothing important, I believe. Nothing."

Well, _nothing_ in Artemis-ese usually meant a very big, very dangerous _something. _Holly squinted at him suspiciously. "Well? What is it? Did we overlook something?" It had been eight years and counting, but the look on his face had her exponentially more nervous than the roomful of people they were about to encounter.

Holly took a step towards him, mistook the forward pitch of posture and tripped, catching herself against the wall.

Artemis observed his companion's seemingly drunken stumble and gave a long-suffering sigh.

"Walking with these on would be a nightmare even without the nausea, Artemis, much less the heavy eye makeup," Holly snapped angrily at him. "I'm not exactly the poster girl for grace right now."

"It's fine." He straightened his tie briefly before extending a bent arm towards her. "It is customary to enter together, in any case. That way, you can steady yourself against me until we reach our seats. I had Myles save us one quite near the entrance. Are you ready?"

Holly placed a hand on top of his arm rather reluctantly, pressing down a little harder when another wave of dizziness washed over her. "Ready as I'll ever be. In and out. Let's do this."

The two took a step towards the great doors.

* * *

/

* * *

**Ballroom, ****Le Grand Casino de Monte Carlo**

Tonight was going perfectly.

Most young women dreaded the tedium of family parties, but for Adelaide Galibois, it was always the opposite. The Galibois family had earned their money through a sundry mess of industrial empires, which meant they rarely held swanky soirees except when her temperamental mother was in the very best of moods. _And_ only if said moods lasted the obligatory 3-month planning period the wealthy and fabulous required to adequately prepare for these gatherings. Needless to say, this didn't happen very often.

But when they did, they were _always _held in Monaco, with its impeccably clean streets and upward growth; colorful apartment complexes and condos seemingly built into the rocky shoreline hills and extending skyward eternally. A billionaire's geometric playground. Adelaide loved it immensely.

"A drink?" Offered a female voice at her elbow; Adelaide turned at the sound. It was one of the servers, decked out in outfits Adelaide herself had picked out. A pale green strapless taffeta cocktail dress for the female servers, a suit and matching green tie for the males – both wore beautifully detailed feathered white masks over the upper halves of their faces. A slightly sarcastic personal twist on her mother's favourite saying that good help was always noticed but never _really_ seen.

Quite a strange choice, some of the guests had remarked on the uniforms, seeing as Adelaide famously abhorred the color green, but still very attractive nevertheless.

"Oh, yes," replied the young heiress, reaching for one of the strawberry-garnished flutes. She looked at her server, wondering what on earth had made her choose the dreadful color – attractive hue or not – in the first place. Oh well, nothing for it now. "That's a terribly interesting accent you have there. Where are you from?"

The girl, whose auburn hair was swept into a fashionable partial updo behind her head, smiled widely at her young employer. "Oh, all under."

Adelaide gave a soft laugh. This girl's English clearly could use a little work. "You mean 'over'. All_ over_."

"No," replied the server, wide smile never wavering. "I mean _under_."

Adelaide frowned at the waitress, about to say something until a movement at the great doors behind the waitress caught her eye and she very nearly missed choking on her drink. In fact, Adelaide barely noticed the arrival of her mother at her shoulder or the fact that the young, masked woman stealthily slipped back into the throng of now mostly silenced people.

"Well, well," murmured the Lady Galibois from somewhere at her daughter's side. "What have we here?"

Artemis Fowl II had arrived and, for the first time in twenty-three years, he had a girl on his arm.

* * *

/

_Nothing hurts more than seeing 80 hits and one review. Come on guys, hit me. ;)_


	7. Baby Blues

**A/N: **I gave in and gave the story an AH UST rating -- because I've totally given in. I tried going over the next few chapters in my head, but somehow an unhealthy dose of UST snuck in there. Please don't jump ship if this isn't quite up your alley!

* * *

**Ballroom, Le Grand Casino de Monte Carlo, Monaco**

Holly's feet hurt.

She gingerly crossed one leg over the other, feeling the holster-pack strapped to her thigh. It was a comfort thing. In a room full of sharp-tongued neo-courtiers, it was always nice to be packing heat. And she certainly was: the Hadron X2, the newest offspring from the union of Foaly's brain and giant LEP budget. Possessing the current defense capabilities of the latest Neutrino model coupled with grappling gun features, including a point-and-press angle estimation system and lightweight, strong-as-steel cord.

The first part of the night had been spent making rounds in the ballroom (after a brief rest for Holly), flitting from table to table and waiting for Artemis to finish his obligatory (but still remarkably long-winded) greetings. The first few times, Holly had ignored the new acquaintances completely, instead taking the opportunity to scan the room for a decent layout on the iris cam. The place was humongous, overly lavish – potentially a problem for hidden exits and the like. French palaces were notorious for having concealed doors, so the possibility couldn't be ruled out. The servers drifted in and out of the sea of people, clad in a very charming shade of green. Holly's favourite color, in fact.

Artemis gave a badly concealed cough from beside her.

She snapped to attention, catching the politely wary glances of an older couple in front of her. Oh, right. "Oh, hi. I'm sorry, what were your names again?"

"Moira," answered Artemis instead, all flawless charm. Fake, thought Holly, resisting the urge to roll her eyes. "These are the Sidins, of Brunei, old friends of my father's. Mr. and Mrs. Sidin, this is Miss Moira Short. An acquaintance of my family's."

"Nice to meet you," offered Holly, somewhat stiffly. "Brunei is… very beautiful." It _was_ true – Holly could never convincingly choke out a lie – a few too many people and cars, but a gorgeous place, nevertheless.

The woman laughed, a titillating giggle that sounded forced. "Why, thank you," she answered, her English tinged with Oxford tones. "But I can't say that we had anything to do with it." Artemis surreptitiously raised an eyebrow at this; seven million Darussalams donated to the beautification of the country didn't exactly count for nothing. "But _really_, Miss Short. We were so surprised to see young Artemis bring a friend tonight! How on earth did you manage to rope Ireland's most eligible young bachelor?"

Rope. That was a verb she had heard a lot of tonight. Artemis the Enigmatic had once again left out yet another important detail of their plans: that all eyes would be on her as the only young woman he had ever deemed _worthy_ enough to attend a social function. Way to go, Artemis, thought Holly. _Really _stealthy.

"With a razor-wire lasso," she deadpanned back. "High-tensile, fourteen-inch gage."

Artemis caught her badly-veiled threat and coughed. "Er… Abu, Ida, if you'll kindly excuse us. Moira mentioned earlier that she wasn't feeling very well."

The slightly shocked couple nodded in speechless unison.

Holly gave a stiff nod, but couldn't suppress a smile at the looks on their faces. "A pleasure, Mr. and Mrs. Sidin. Selamat malam."

Artemis led her promptly away from the couple and back towards their table. "Clearly, I cannot take you anywhere."

"Clearly," mocked Holly. "You can't take _anybody _anywhere. What gives, Mud Boy? Juliet told me that you've had at least one girlfriend before, gods know how funny _that _is, were none of them good enough to grace your arm at these events?"

Artemis looked irritated. "I suppose it wouldn't suffice to say that it made things too troublesome—"

"It makes _this _too troublesome, Artemis! It doesn't take a genius to see that I stick out like a sore thumb."

Artemis hastily changed the subject. "Any word from Mulch or Foaly as of yet?"

Myles only heard the last part of the conversation as the duo neared the family table, glancing over at his elder brother. "Artemis, are you expecting more company?"

"No, no. Moira and I were merely discussing a few mutual acquaintances."

Juliet was busy adjusting Beckett's lopsided tie as the younger boy discreetly shoved his peas onto the highly polished floor underneath their table. Holly settled herself down into the chair beside him with an audible sigh of relief.

Juliet grinned at her. "Shoes?"

Holly rolled her eyes with gusto. "You mean these humongous torture devices I have strapped to my feet? Kind of. Yeah."

Juliet gave the other girl an understanding nod; the shoes were gorgeous but obviously brutal. However, Moira seemed to be having a little more trouble than would be normal. Maybe she really _wasn't_ feeling well, as she had openly stated several times during the dress fitting. But Juliet figured that that had everything to do with the strapless bra.

She looked at Artemis. "Maybe Moira should sit down for a little bit… Who knows, maybe whatever Uncle Marty had was catching. I'll stay with her."

"I'll stay here as well," offered Myles, removing his cell phone from a jacket pocket and checking it for the umpteenth time that night. "I've been waiting for updates on Sabine all day. Nothing, yet." He looked a little sad.

Holly considered the younger boy for a moment. Myles was almost the spitting image of Artemis at that age: slender, pale and brilliant beyond all compare. Save for a few differences, here and there: Myles' hair was tawnier, his nails ragged from his frowned-upon habit of nail-biting. Most importantly: not evil.

Not that Artemis was _evil_, necessarily, but anyone who had met him back in the day would certainly be hard pressed to deny that the boy had been dangerously close. Here was a very different sort of person, considerably less ambitious, one who cared about others. Holly felt a warm curl of sympathy in her chest. "Myles," she said to him, leaning over. "I think you've got nothing to worry about. Sabine's got a few people watching over her."

The child scoffed precociously. "Quite amusing, Ms. Short. And from above, I presume?"

She grinned back. "From below, actually."

Beckett let out a snort. "What a weird thing to say, Moira."

Artemis, who had been standing with an arm against the top of Holly's seat, looked between the three of them pensively, then rapped lightly on the headrest of Holly's chair. "Very well; Moira, you stay here. I'll only be a moment. I'll be in the foyer bathroom if you need me."

The elf gave him a sour look. "Thanks for the announcement, Artemis." Beckett stifled a giggle before being nudged by Myles, but Artemis had already walked away.

Holly caught Beckett's eye and gestured conspiratorially at the peas that littered the floor beside his chair. She leaned towards him. "I won't say anything, but only on the grounds that you eat a good handful of broccoli when we get home."

Beckett weighed his options and nodded. He _hated_ peas.

"And there they go," commented Juliet suddenly, finishing off her aperitif. "Party season is vulture season."

Holly blinked at her comment. "What?"

"Myles," whispered Beckett in his brother's ear. "What's a vulture?"

"It's a bird, Becks. Although why Juliet is likening a young woman with a carrion-eating ornithoid is utterly beyond me."

Holly turned around to look. A young woman, dressed in the servers' green dress and white feathered mask, was curiously watching Artemis' exit. "Er… should you probably look into that?"

Juliet shrugged. "Nah. Happens each and every summer. Biological clocks are ticking, you know, money needs to be mingled. All I'd end up with is some sort of one-sided catfight in the foyer and scratch marks down both arms. Inga Adelcreutz is particularly bad. I don't think she's here tonight, though."

"You're kidding," laughed Holly, thinking about the immense hilarity of it all. Well, it _was_ kind of like magic, she supposed – money must also have a great affinity for itself. But the girl wasn't a young heiress, she was a server. What was the likelihood of her even knowing which rich face was which? Holly glanced back, and noticed that the girl had moved – silently following Artemis' path through towards great doors. Hmm.

Holly considered. It could be nothing, just some young lady after the immense Fowl riches or the heir himself, but it could just as easily be something. And that _something_ might result in a botched mission, or something far worse. One very dead Artemis Fowl, for example.

"Excuse me," said Holly, pushing her chair away from the table. "I'll only be a second."

* * *

**Le Jardin Exotique, Monte Carlo**

**/**

Mulch took a deep breath, inhaling the intoxicating scents of the lush summer night. The moon was high, the soil was soft and springy beneath his feet. What could he say? Mulch was in his element.

The same could definitely not be said about Holly, whose progress he had been observing through the grand windows and via her hazel iris-cam. The view on the screen gave another dangerous pitch as she took yet another badly hidden stumble, this time almost into a sculpture that undoubtedly cost most than her entirely yearly paycheck.

Mulch whistled at the close shave. The girl had class, but definitely not recently. Mulch, being sturdier and slightly lower to the ground, was similarly racked by the occasional spell of nausea, but happened to be less prone to vertigo. A plus, it turned out. Not a terribly big one, mind you, but when you were prone to getting into skin-of-your-teeth shenanigans for very little to no rewards, you made sure you counted your blessings.

Which brought our favourite dwarf right back to another issue that had been predominately niggling at him – excepting the beetles, poison ivy and other nightly wildlife, of course. See, Mulch figured that good deeds were like bad habits – once you got started, you were kind of hooked. And it wasn't for anything as trite as the good feeling that came from the good deed itself, no siree. If you asked Mulch, his stroll through the more legal meadows happened to be more of a coincidence. It just so happened his current partners in crime operated (mostly) on the other side of the law. Plus, this whole getting rewarded for his brilliance in their missions was starting to look a lot better than spending the subsequent years evading increasingly resourceful law enforcers.

The dwarf shook his head at the very notion of it. Him relishing a crimeless life? He _must _be getting old.

Anyway. He had been stuck with the outdoor surveillance duty for tonight, following the many failed attempts at getting him to eat and act like a decently civilized person. Well, from what he could see, Holly wasn't faring much better. Sitting nestled in a hastily-erected cham pod with a bucket of juicy beetles at his side and an image of Foaly sweating bullets at the fact that Mulch Diggums was alone with his technology in his head, Mulch was kind of thinking that he might've ended up with the longer straw here.

So let's see, he thought, taking another quick survey of his surroundings. Moon full, beetle bucket 75 empty, Artemis making his way across the floor, masked girl following him, Holly obviously cursing as she slipped on the slick tile, a small, dark figure doing something or other above the left window –

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Mulch fumbled for the night-vision goggles beside him, knocking over his beetle bucket as he did so and causing its contents to scurry happily off into the night. He switched the view to infrared. Nothing, save for a few snoozing birds and a hedgehog nosing about for snails. But all the dwarf hairs on Mulch's face were suddenly stark-straight on alert. And as we all know, it was always better to trust the hairs.

So, reaching for the comm with his other hand, Mulch opened a line to their so-called all-seeing surveillance man. "Hey, top notch security," he whispered. "You want to wake up long enough to ID this for me?" Call him paranoid, but he'd bet his last gold bar that he had seen something there one second ago. A mysterious something that had definitely been skulking. And in his books, skulking meant trouble.

When the expected effusion of indignant whinnies did not come, Mulch asked: "Hey, Genius. You there?"

And unfortunately for our top-side party, there was no answer.

* * *

**Three Shroves Hospital, West Haven, Lower Elements**

**/**

Foaly was about six steps away from wearing a hole right through the floor.

He had just spent the last five hours, forty-nine minutes and twenty two seconds pacing back and forth in the waiting room of the OB-GYN ward at Three Shroves. Twenty three seconds. Twenty four.

Okay, so maybe he was feeling a _tad_ antsy.

And for good reason, too. First and foremost was the uncomfortable niggling guilt at his conscience for ditching the case as abruptly as he did (forced or not; Foaly could swear he had bruises the shape of Pepper's hands on both wrists). Sure, the case _should_ have been a rudimentary enter-and-observe, but with old Acid and Base Artemis and Holly involved, things could get considerably stickier up there. And Mulch Diggums being left alone with hundreds of priceless gadgets didn't exactly do much for Foaly's nerves, either.

"Mr. Foaly," said Caballine's doctor, a harried looking young man who was probably fresh out of med school. "Would you mind sitting down, please? You're making the other patients nervous… I can assure you your wife is fine."

Foaly grit his teeth impatiently. "Fine, sure, whatever. But can I get a briefing on what's happening _now? _As in: every sordid detail of what's going on behind those doors? No. So just let me back in there and we'll be fine."

"Unfortunately, we can't –"

"Look," he squinted at the doctor's slightly lopsided name tag. "Dr. Lotus. Mind if I call you Doc? Half an hour ago I was sitting in a perfectly calm manner with my wife before I was rudely told to leave the room –"

"Mr. Foaly," asserted Dr. Lotus in a long-suffering way. "You were asked to leave by your wife herself!"

"I'm sure her judgment was clouded by the immense pain of labour," dismissed Foaly, as if he knew all about it. "Anyway, don't you have higher jurisdiction over these things?"

"Sir, excuse me for saying this, but I believe your wife's choice was perfectly adequate considering the circumstances –"

Foaly gawped. "That I be excluded from the birth of my first child?"

"Sir, as she became further dilated, you became so excited that you broke the gurney's armrest from squeezing it so tightly. You nearly did the same to your wife's hand."

"I was nervous. Possibly more nervous than her." Foaly thought for a second. "But only possibly."

The doctor gave a tired-sounding sigh. "Mr. Foaly, I assure you that your wife will be fine. Though the information on centaur births is certainly limited, Caballine is doing brilliantly. She's a wonderful patient and very eager to help fill in the gaps in our medical information files. We are doing everything we can to make sure this birth goes smoothly."

Foaly considered, feeling only slightly bad for harassing the doctor. Twenty-two pages on your beeper in as many minutes might get a little annoying."You know what, Doc? Thanks for that, really. I can sense you're a great guy; wouldn't want anyone else heading this birth. So, between friends, can I go in?"

"Absolutely not," answered the doctor. "These are your wife's wishes. She informed us that you are prone to fainting at the sight of blood, and removing you from the OR would take considerable effort. Please just try to remain calm."

"This isn't fair!" whinnied Foaly, childishly stamping a hoof. A waiting-room patron beside the two moved surreptitiously away from the irate centaur.

"Foaly," interrupted a soft voice, thankfully coming to the doctor's aid. "Give it a rest and leave the doctor alone, okay?"

The centaur paused; he'd know that voice anywhere. Turning towards the source of the noise, Foaly caught a glimpse of the gurney being wheeled out of the OR and the tired-looking Caballine clutching a small bundle of blankets to her chest.

"Baby!" He exclaimed, galloping over. "You've got a baby!" Foaly glanced at his watch. "Was it supposed to be this fast? Is everything okay?"

She laughed at his charmingly neurotic brand of worry. "Absolutely, but wait until you calm down to hold her, okay? Frond knows you'll crush her into a pulp like you did the arm rest."

Foaly gasped at the very thought of it. "I'd never – whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Did you say 'her'?"

Caballine nodded.

"'Her'_, _as in the feminine objective personal pronoun?"

"Yes, dear."

"'Her' as in _her_?" He pointed delicately at the tiny bundle she held close.

Caballine rolled her eyes. "As in: it's a bloody girl, you idiot."

Foaly grinned down at the little sleeping face in Caballine's arms, secretly making note to throw away all the boy-oriented toys and games he had candidly purchased over the last year. A girl, huh? He could get used to that. Maybe she'd grow up to be a fiery little girl like Holly…

Wait. Holly.

Artemis. Mulch. The case.

D'Arvit.

Caballine noticed the increasingly worried look on her husband's face with profound amusement. "Get out of here," she instructed, laughing. "Let me sleep. And make sure Holly's alive long enough to become our baby's godmother."

He didn't need to be told twice. Planting a quick kiss on his wife and brand new baby girl, Foaly made for the front doors, throwing a conciliatory wave and smile at the relieved-looking young doctor on his way out.

He had a party to crash.

/

* * *

_You know the drill, guys: I'd love nothing more than to hear from you!_


	8. It Started With A

Phew, it's been a long time. Is anyone still reading ? Anyway... I'm really, really going to try to finish this. Unfortunately, this doesn't mean weekly, regular updates. But updates still! And in less time than it took for this one!

**­**

* * *

**­­­­­­Outside the Foyer Bathroom, Grand Casino, Monte Carlo, Monaco**

* * *

Now, some people might have figured that the young man standing outside the Grand Casino foyer bathroom was the picture-perfect example of composure: a back straight from a good upbringing rather than anxiety, lips moving slightly in quiet pondering, fingers lightly drumming against the windowsill in ennui rather than agitation.

And yet. Those who knew Artemis Fowl would realize that this could not have been farther from the truth. Said persons would recognize the grim set of his mouth as an expression of dismay, the drumming fingers as an uncharacteristic waste of movement, the silent mutterings a message to a seemingly absent receiver.

You see, Artemis was feeling rather anxious.

By his reckoning, it had been at least six hours and twenty-two minutes since the last time he had contacted Foaly – factoring in the supposed meeting with the Commander that the centaur had excused himself for, that left approximately five and a half hours unaccounted for, give or take. Which was ample time for a large number of things to occur – mostly bad. Artemis had learned this the hard way.

"Hello? Foaly, if you are there, please answer now." There was no need for volume; the impressive device attached to Artemis' neck would receive and transmit vibrations from his vocal cords – a descrambler down below would render the vibrations back into speech for their underground receiver. Whether this receiver was AWOL or not.

But the earpiece remained stubbornly silent, and the only sounds in Artemis' ear were the lilting background of music and conversation drifting from the ballroom nearby. He sighed, rubbing a temple, and took stock of the situation.

Judging from the night-long running commentary coming from Mulch's line out in the small cham-tent stashed nearby, Artemis thought it was reasonably safe to conclude that the snarky dwarf's surveillance equipment were not experiencing any significant malfunction (Holly, Artemis knew, had turned off her own earpiece following Mulch's twenty-third inserted comment on her apparent lack of grace. But he had safely seen her a moment prior). That still left one centaur unaccounted for, however, and all lines to the Underground had been uncharacteristically quiet.

Following their last conversation, the plan had been to remain in contact throughout the evening, keeping surveillance as their main focus, action their last. Around one-thirty in the afternoon, however, Foaly had been summoned to Trouble's office for something or other (Foaly had been suspiciously cagey about this, hanging up in the middle of their conversation). So really, this was likely some sort of issue down below; a reprimand or unexpected assignment. But they were still left in silence and it was no lie that, eyeless and earless, this night could take a dramatic turn for the worse at any moment.

True to form, Artemis had kept this information artfully concealed in order to convince the other two to go ahead with the plans. The following was his rationale: the sooner Sabine could be returned to her family, the better. And another disastrous event was unlikely to happen so close to the first, after all.

But then again, unlikely was still pretty far from impossible. Which was why the sooner Foaly picked up his dratted comm line, the better.

Artemis grit his teeth. "Foaly!"

A moment later, welcome (albeit rude) relief came. "Keep your panties on, Artemis," said crackly sounding voice. "I'm right here."

Artemis let out a huff of anxious release, but regained his composure quickly. "Foaly. Excellent. Would you kindly explain what exactly it was that kept you away from surveillance for half a day?"

"As a matter of fact," the centaur announced. "It was a baby. Four pounds, two ounces. Haven's newest Beauty Queen. One hell of a reason, don't you think?"

Artemis shook his head, though he couldn't help smiling. "Of course… My congratulations."

"Sincerity from Artemis Fowl." Foaly gave a shiver. "It just doesn't suit you. Anyway, second on the list was acreepytransmissionwegotthisafternoon." This, he said in a hushed sort of mumble. "Ahem. Thanks, by the way."

"Excuse me? What transmission are you referring to exactly?"

"Er… Nothing special. At least not yet. Look, we're looking into things down here so you just forget about it and focus on the dancing and the little miss. I'm sure Sabine wants to get home just as badly as you want her to." Foaly paused. "And Artemis? The motion feed is picking up someone behind you, so this conversation's over."

Wonderful. Probably another friend of a friend, duchess of this, baron of that. Artemis turned to meet the unknowing intruder, dismay flickering through his face only slightly before he composed his features…And frowned. This was no baron nor duchess. In fact, it was a young lady, decked in the seemingly customary green garment and white mask that adorned the other servers.

"May I help you?" He asked, sounding a tad less gracious than he would with any visitor of less humble origins, something he only noticed after the fact. But then again, some ingrained manners were harder to abandon than others.

The girl looked sharply upwards at his voice, a movement that, through the mask, was conveyed as a flicker of eyelashes through the eyeholes; a sudden change from dark eyelids to light irises and a flash of something strange in her eyes. Familiarity? She stayed silent.

Deciding that this new development was hardly worth his time, Artemis raised an unamused eyebrow at her silence and moved to step around her. There were other things worth worrying about, for instance, the briefly mentioned transmission… Of course Foaly would be quick to brush most embarrassing situations under the rug, but he'd likely never do so without proper investigation. There were more things at stake here than Foaly's dignity… His foot touched down on the carpet as the girl pulled off her mask.

Artemis stopped dead in his tracks beside her.

Standing before him was the exact same young woman he had seen sitting in the ballroom a mere quarter of an hour earlier, dressed in decidedly different attire from head to toe. "Holly," said Artemis warily, equal parts suspicious and surprised. There was absolutely no way he had overlooked or – perish the thought – _forgotten_ a planned costume change –

"You know me," was her reply. It sounded more like a statement than a question. An expression of angry confusion crossed her familiar features.

What on earth? Artemis' brain jumped between logical possibilities like electrical discharge between conductors, cataloguing inconsistencies at a prodigious rate: her comment, the new dress, the mask, the different hairstyle. _It wasn't her_, said his brain. Could he have possibly made some mistake?

But his verdict dipped, turning hazy, as she suddenly closed the small distance between them by gripping his arm and leaning forward. Then, in sudden proximity, all running hormone-fuelled cylinders agreed that this was _definitely _Holly: the slightly hooked slope of nose, the curve of her neck, tilt of head, the sway of her form. All Holly. Except…

_Her eyes_, thought Artemis. _They're two different colours._

But that was when she kissed him.

* * *

//

* * *

**Le Jardin Exotique, Monte Carlo, Monaco**

* * *

When Foaly's carrot-munching mug flickered onto the side-comm by Mulch's left foot, it effectively ruined what was left of the dwarf's peaceful, peaceful night.

"Hey, any sentient life up there?" quipped the centaur. "Oh no, it's just Mulch."

The apparently non-sentient being in question grudgingly pressed the acknowledge button on his end of the device, keeping both eyes on Artemis' visual feed to maintain an uncaring façade. Okay, so it wasn't a façade.

"Well, well, look who decided to finally show up. Now my night can really get started. And where've you been, exactly?"

"Meh. Just some trouble belowground, et cetera, et cetera. Minor glitch; working on it. You know. But _anyway. _Guess what?"

Mulch, unwilling to give him the benefit of his full attention, tried to remain raptly watching the feed while trying to quell the latest in a series of lurches his stomach was giving, presumably in protest of his full-body transformation and the few moments of Holly surveillance he had had to endure that night. It was largely a self-harming and childish gesture, given that the view wasn't best on the stomach – the journey up the stairs a predictable pattern of: dip, realign, awkward smile at whatever curious passerby stared at the seemingly inebriated young woman who had appeared on the arm of Artemis the Infamously Single, curse, trip, rinse and repeat. Before Foaly's disappearance, Mulch had traded for Artemis' feed. A sound decision.

"Oh, I've got a brain full of guesses, but believe me, none you want to hear."

Foaly scowled back at him. "Fine. It's a baby, Diggums. You're looking at proud, new daddy number one." He proudly brandished his half-eaten carrot like a cigar. It was a very Julius-like pose.

Mulch paused in the process of switching screens and finally turned towards the tiny side-monitor. This small motion had two very different consequences. On a positive note, it meant that Foaly finally had his full and undivided attention. On the other hand, it also meant that Mulch just missed the tail end of Artemis' conversation with the very familiar-looking young lady.

"A baby?" Asked Mulch with what sounded like ridiculously childlike glee. "A little Mulch Jr. galloping around Haven?" He suddenly began gathering up the goods around him, stuffing it into an extendable backpack he had produced from seemingly nowhere. "No reneging on the whole naming deal, now."

"Yes, indeed," beamed the centaur, grinning. His smile dropped like a hot rock when he registered the second half of Mulch's comment. "Er… not exactly. At least about the Mulch Jr. part. See, it's a girl, – _she's _a girl, I mean, and – why are you still packing?"

Mulch paused in his stuffing to grin at him."I think Mulchette would suffice. Or Mulcherina? Anyway, gotta get back down there before you ruin her. Keep watch over my things, will you?"

Foaly whinnied indignantly. "I would _not_. I'd rather eat a whole – what is it? You're creeping me out."

Mulch's eyes had suddenly veered back to the other surveillance screen and widened about two centimeters in diameter before narrowing into disbelieving little squints. The hairs on his chin almost looked as though they had curled into tiny question marks in complement to his expression.

"Mulch. Any day now." Prompted Foaly, annoyed at the interruption. "What is it?"

Silence; dead and utter silence coupled with a look of not-so-reserved incredulousness. A near impossibility for old Mouth-on-Legs Diggums. Instantly, this had Foaly suspicious. "Mulch?"

"Yeah, yeah… Ah, you were on Holly's feed, right?"

"Obviously," answered Foaly, rolling his eyes. "Since apparently _some _people can't watch Holly's screen due to motion sickness—"

The dwarf ignored this jibe and let out an ambiguous: "Huh."

"Er…Why exactly?"

"Well, you might want to try switching screens."

This, naturally, sent Foaly's already overdeveloped paranoia dangerously towards the edge. "To Artemis' line?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant but totally failing. "You're not telling me Elvis is alive and on Artemis' screen, are you?"

And for once, Mulch adopted a tone of perfect sobriety and told him: "No, this is definitely better."

But Foaly was saved the effort of switching camera screens when Holly rounded the corner towards the washroom, catching a glimpse of Artemis Fowl and someone who looked very much like her.

Correction: of Artemis Fowl _kissing _someone who looked very much like her.

"What the – !" stuttered Foaly, choking on his carrot.

"ARTEMIS!" Came Holly's stunned and horrified yell. Although _yell_ might not have been as good a word choice as _gasp_, since she was about a moment away from losing her very expensive dinner all over the very expensive carpet. This may or may not have had anything to do with the sight before her. "Get the hell away from me!"

And that was when all hell broke loose.

Holly yelled another indiscriminate something, likely foaming at the mouth, as Foaly hacked up the offending vegetable and got to work on switching camera views for a better glimpse of their mysterious newcomer. Mulch took the courtesy of sitting back and rewinding the footage on a side screen for another look at the lip lock, tapping his chin in amusement and muttering something along the lines of: "I swear I've seen this somewhere before…"

And he might have remembered – really – if all the first floor windows hadn't chosen that exact moment to explode.

* * *

//

* * *


	9. Up, Up and Away

**A/N:** Late, I know. But still going! I just spent the last while reading the whole series on my DS and god damn, do I love this series. The Atlantis Complex rumours had me going absolutely batshit. Made a few alterations to this story here and there, mostly to correct inconsistencies with canon.

* * *

**Chapter 8 – Up, Up and Away**

* * *

**Bathroom Hall**

**

* * *

  
**

The next few moments went by in a blur.

The unexpected explosion rocked the floor beneath their feet like a vicious seismic wave, knocking Artemis against the near wall and Holly hard up against the railing. She groaned against the churning it inspired in her already-ailing stomach.

Then, quick as a flash, the remarkably familiar-looking newcomer seemingly recovered her wits and made her move, darting towards the women's washroom with a distinctly familiar grace before the ground had stopped shaking.

To this, Artemis spared about a twentieth of his attention, turning immediately to his other, less graceful cohort. The rest of his brainpower was spent rapidly churning through an impressively large tree of follow-up actions, weaving each new revelation into the fabric of their plans. First things, first. "The guests," said Artemis urgently. "Holly, check for all the heiresses downstairs."

And she would have nodded but Holly was already moving, both shoes off and, rather expensively, discarded in a nearby corner. "Right," she managed, her gait a tad slower than the her usual quick-footed manner. _I must be really out of it_, she thought to herself, extending one hand to the close wall in order to stabilize her run. _It feels like the ground is shaking._

Behind her, Artemis prepared to follow suit. But after a moment's consideration, decided against it. Was it a sudden trick of the light that made Holly's fingers appear as though they were... vibrating?

_Up,_ he thought then, pausing for a moment to tilt his head backwards. Above them, the ceiling rumbled faintly, emitting a light hum. Plaster dust trickled from the corners of the room. _What would cause such a uniform vibration?_

There was one very likely possibility. Artemis turned briskly around at the realization, extinguishing the pang of concern that left him wanting to follow in Holly's footsteps, and made his way towards the washroom after their mysterious visitor.

Artemis only glanced briefly at the very obviously female stick figure depicted on the sign above the entrance. He paused for but a moment.

_Desperate times called for desperate measures_, he reasoned, and pushed open the door.

* * *

//

* * *

Holly couldn't see. The first floor was a sea of dust and glittering crystal, lying in slurried puddles all around the wooden floor. She picked a careful path through what seemed like a million piles of terribly expensive debris, half sliding off of slanted, broken tables. All around, the rich and decidedly upset were on the verge of a dozen personal break-downs.

Running a quick visual scan of the current security measures for Foaly and Mulch, Holly winced. Things were bad, she diagnosed, spotting at least a dozen fallen uniformed bodies strewn about the room. Struck dead, judging by the horrible wrench of their various extremities. Death, though part of the natural life cycle, had never been something she enjoyed coming face-to-face with.

"Moira!"

Holly's head snapped towards the direction of the familiar voice. The twins?

Beckett peeked out from under the remnants of a nearby table, a considerable number of peas strewn about him. He followed the line of her gaze. "That wasn't me," he protested faintly. "It happened when the table broke."

Myles, who had been nestled under the piece of furniture beside his brother, crawled out testily. "Again," he remarked, incredulous.

Holly breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of them, suppressing a smile at the angrier of the two. "The table, of course you'd think of getting under it. Myles, do you have any idea where Juliet is?"

He gestured at a female-shaped lump behind him, half in, half out from underneath the table. "And, if you don't mind, may I ask where Artemis is?"

Beckett nudged Juliet with the handle end of a fork. "She's sleeping, I think."

"Not sleeping," corrected Holly, after checking the unconscious girl's pulse. "Looks like she was hit on the head. Not too hard, though." The culprit lay nearby: an ornately carved chunk of wood that had previously occupied the top corner of a windowsill. She glanced at Myles. "You've checked her out already, I'm guessing? Did you see what happened?"

"Where is Artemis?" He pressed on stubbornly, fear adding urgency to his voice.

Scared? Holly narrowed her eyes at him. "Upstairs, but I need you to tell me if you saw anything. We're working on figuring this out."

"Well, we don't know where she went," Beckett chimed in. "Somebody came in through the window and took her away."

Holly's blood ran cold. "What? Who?"

"Adelaide Galibois," corrected Myles sharply. "And _somebody_ is a stretch of the truth. I certainly didn't see any _person_ come in through there."

"What _did_ you see?"

"Nothing. It was as though the window simply broke inwards and then she was pulled out." He shook his head. "Just like with Sabine."

Nodding, Holly briefly placed a comforting hand upon the boy's shoulder. "Alright. Stay here." She moved towards the window, partly to examine the damage there but mostly to disguise her conversation with apparently nobody. "Foaly?"

A flurry of clicks answered her. "Foaly's a little preoccupied," came Mulch's nonchalant reply. "Currently losing his marbles, and all."

Holly sighed. Yes, she could imagine that unexpected (?) explosion would have Foaly at maximum stress levels. He had, after all, just witnessed the birth of his first child before being thrust into the action. "Right. Well, I'm sure I don't need to tell you, but some weird stuff just went down. Any luck on the girl's vitals? Myles and Beckett confirmed it was Adelaide Galibois, though there might've been others taken too."

In his pod, Mulch glanced over at Foaly's screen. The centaur was typing with an obsessed and frightening fury. "I think he might be trying to sift through the vitals for them as we speak."

"Okay. And Juliet's stats?"

Mulch flicked on the receiving screen for the device that would remote-monitor any living beings within a twenty-yard radius of Holly's sensor. It was disguised as a rather tasteful diamond earring. "One bumped noggin," he confirmed. "That's all. There are a couple of mice beneath your feet that are in perfect health, though."

Holly ignored him, instead leaning close to inspect the broken window. Where would the escaped kidnapper and kidnappee have fled to? The bottom sill had been torn raggedly downwards on the inside: a heavy takeoff for their kidnapper, perhaps? Not the kind of damage associated with a simple leap-and-run. That left out right, left and down.

Left with only one option, Holly stuck her head out of the window and looked up. "Okay," she instructed Mulch. "Keep watch over the twins and Juliet for me, will you?" Then she set off at a run.

On the other end of the outdoor garden, Mulch Diggums tapped inquisitively on his receiver, having just witnessed a brief flash of night sky and then a sudden race through the ballroom on her iriscam. "Holly? Helloo?"

But there was no reply from the other end, where Holly was saving all her energy to make it up the stairs as quickly and with all the contents of her stomach still intact.

She knew she'd have to run fast to beat the flying craft to the roof.

* * *

//

* * *

**Le Jardin Exotique, Monte Carlo, Monaco**

When the explosion happened, neither Foaly nor Mulch were prepared. To be fair, watching Holly and Artemis kiss kind of did that to a person.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," cried Foaly, whipping out multiple keyboards before beginning to type furiously. Almost instantly, he had the extrapolators working on the feeds stolen from the first floor.

At the speed with which the person had to have been snatched, you'd have a crazy heart rate and evidence of light G-forces. That, or pure unconsciousness. So the remote-monitoring sensors they had installed were flicking rapidly through all the vitals of the known guests, looking for someone who wasn't feeling quite up to par. This was made far more difficult by the fact that about twenty percent of the guestlist had taken this opportunity to faint. Rich people, Foaly thought disapprovingly. So soft.

A light flickered. Adelaide Galibois -- the vitals were reading unconscious and the signals were getting fainter. She was moving away from the sensor's coverage, and fast. They had their abductee.

Mulch, who's hiding spot had been bombarded by hailstorm of glass, merely sat back up, switching out of the iris-feeds and back into the lower-level surveillance camera as per Holly's orders. His eyes were greeted by utter mayhem - glass everywhere, even in the laps of distraught women trying to dust it off their expensive gowns in-between sobs. It glittered in the wilted hairdos of sodden, foppish men. No missing girls spottedyet, but Mulch could barely tell Mud People apart anyway.

No, what he was looking for was – there? Screaming woman in the way. There? No, if only the stout baron could move a tad to the left. There? Yep. Which would make it—

Mulch tugged off his goggles, making his way over to the edge of the extremely covert bush in which he was currently staking out and stuck his head up through the leaves, causing broken glass to tinkle lightly to ground. Musical rain. He grinned.

"Up," he said into his mic.

So Foaly, goggles askew, looked up from his keyboard, the monitors tracking Adelaide Galibois' thermal signals, screens quickly extrapolating data from footage at the exact moment of explosion, the dual screens chronicling Holly and Artemis' respective views and the map that was about to flash another red light over Monaco, heralding where the potential disappearance of yet another billion-dollar heir had just happened right under their very noses.

"What?" Asked Foaly testily, staring at Mulch's now-empty screen.

"_Up_, Pony Boy!" Came Mulch's disembodied voice. "Look up!"

* * *

//

* * *

**Foyer Bathroom, Grand Casino, Monte Carlo, Monaco**

Holly burst heavily through the bathroom door, breathing heavily. Under any other circumstances, the upstairs run would have been a breeze for the usually athletic elf, but she hadn't been feeling her best lately. What with the changing of species, and all.

Artemis turned at her entrance and raised an eyebrow. "Abductees?"

"Yes, one. Adelaide Galibois. Foaly just let me know over the headset."

Artemis gave a thoughtful nod. He suspected so from the moment of the explosion, though he wished it wasn't true. It certainly made their night a lot harder. "And what about everyone else? Was anyone hurt?"

"Plenty. But Beckett and Myles are fine, at least. Juliet'll be out for a little bit, she's hit her head."

Artemis looked pensive, already plotting out on their next course of action.

Holly tried her best to give him the silence he needed to think, but the pause felt somewhat weird. Awkward, even. Or maybe that was just her stomach.

In truth, the two of them had kept in moderate contact immediately following their last jaunt through the time tunnel, but neither had ever been the type for small talk. Time, especially, made it harder to keep someone up to date on things from a distance. And so, the updates became less frequent: a happy birthday here, a congralutory message for some Nobel prize there. Time may have moved at different paces for the two of them, but it still moved forward.

And Holly had missed him. Things had been painfully dull without anyone trying to: a) take over the world or b) end an entire species, and she'd be a liar to say that, despite the rush of events that had led them straight onto the doorstep of another disaster, she wasn't excited.

Still, this felt weird. Was it the whole being-a-human thing? Gods knew that the last out-of-body experience Holly endured had wreaked utter havoc with about ninety-percent of the workings in her brain. To further that, she wasn't babysitting some snot-nosed kid anymore. Artemis was -- Artemis was--

Whoa. That kind of thinking got no one anywhere.

"Er, there's a flight craft—" Said Holly suddenly, urging her thoughts out of realms unknown. She moved over to the far side of the washroom, where a tiny broken window existed about twenty feet up. "Artemis, we've got to get out there. Should we head out to the hallway window? It's bigger."

"No," he replied. "I already considered that. The hallway window is embedded right into a straight wall, so we would need to climb upwards for about twenty feet and then onto the roof. Possible, but not particularly my preference."

"Your preference?" Holly exclaimed, exasperated. She felt very suddenly and inexplicably irritated with him. Her brain said something about a kiss, but she shrugged it off. "Artemis, you don't get any preferences in this situation. Adelaide could be on that craft right now, and this window's too high. We don't have any other options."

"True, she most likely is on that craft, as is your apparent Doppelganger. I watched her make her way out of there just as I entered. Some unfamiliar wing design, if I'm not mistaken."

"And you just let her go?" Holly crossed both arms in front of her.

"No," Artemis asserted. "I was waiting for you."

"All these years and still as useless as ever." She pushed past him towards the window.

"In case you've forgotten," said Artemis, catching her by the elbow. She stopped and looked him in the eye. "We do have another option. You are armed with the Hadron, are you not?"

The weight of the weapon strapped to her thigh broke through her irritation, and Holly could have laughed. This whole human experience must have addled her brains. The Hadron and its holster had been wrapped in a sensor-dousing fabric to fool the various detectors they needed to pass in order to gain entrance. Not invisible, Holly had pointed out, but Artemis assured her that high society was never subjected to humiliating searches. Artemis was right, of course. He always was.

Shrugging out of his grip, Holly entered a stall that would give them enough aiming room.

"They're escaping," prompted Artemis unnecessarily, following her into the stall and closing the door behind him to maximize space. "We'll miss the flight craft if we don't hurry."

Holly shot him a withering look. "Move over." The two shifted and shuffled until they both fit semi-comfortably into the tight space. Standing in the front of the toilet, their chests were half an arm-length apart. Well, that was a little stretch of the truth – Holly barely came up to Artemis' shoulder -- it was more of a chest-stomach thing. Wasting no time, Holly quickly wrapped the Hadron's grappling harness around both their waists, securing it tightly with the clips. Artemis lifted both arms obligingly and observed her.

"The swaddling on the ropes. Force-expandable padding?"

Holly nodded, preoccupied. "Yeah, something like that."

"Quite remarkable. I can only imagine the advances made belowground in the past five years," noted Artemis, as though his number of underground hacks hadn't told him this already.

"Right. You and Foaly can chat about it later." Finished with the harnesses, Holly tugged at the long skirt of her dress, hitching it up to her thigh. She extracted the gun from its holster, shaking off the sensor-dulling fabric as she did so, and leaned back against her end of the cubicle. She placed one leg squarely against the wall behind Artemis' hip for a stabilizing tilt.

Artemis kind of wished it was the other, not-so-naked leg. The action was one he could hardly miss in such proximity, despite the dire nature of their situation. _Five_ _years and counting_, he thought, keeping both eyes carefully trained on their target window. _And the hormones were quite obviously still in swing_.

"From what I'm seeing," prompted Artemis, mostly to interrupt his own thoughts. "I believe you would be looking for a sixty-five degree angle."

Holly didn't even spare him a look. "Shut up, Artemis, and let me do my job." She aimed the gun at the faint lights of the craft through the jagged edges of glass, entering estimate angles as she did so: 60 degrees, 69. The small screen churned out likely outcomes, but Holly didn't pay them any attention.

Artemis caught the angular measurements and their subsequent success probabilities. "I do understand. However, time is not something we currently have an abundance of, nor is spatial comprehension your current forte." He was getting progressively more anxious as every moment passed.

Holly shook her head, unable to roll her eyes while watching the measurements."I heard you, already." She had fired more weapons in her life than Artemis could have possibly imagined. "Believe me, angles are all about the feeling." She looked at him briefly and winked.

_The feeling,_ he repeated carefully to himself, watching the quick flutter of her eye.

"Got it." A beep sounded as she locked in the shot. "The glass is looking kind of jagged, so bite down hard, Mud Boy." Holly pointed the device at the broken window. "Because we're about to get a little scraped."

She locked in the angle of 64.63 degrees and fired.

* * *

Review, pretty please?


	10. Grounded

**A/N: **The usual disclaimers apply. The Atlantis Complex release date looms ever closer! I'm so pumped about it, it's not even funny.

* * *

**Grounded**

* * *

The shot made contact with a muffled thump, attaching itself to the base of the craft hovering motionlessly in the space outside the window. Despite its size, it was fairly well camouflaged in the darkness. Artemis frowned. From what he could see, it seemed to be warming up. If the technologies were based upon fairy engineering – and, judging by the modified wings he had seen on Holly's double earlier, Artemis was quite willing to bet that they were – the craft would very soon hit sonic and flicker out of sight at the speed of sound. Time was of the essence.

So he bit down, bracing himself for the tug that would kick in once Holly hit the Hadron's retract button, effectively propelling them out through the window and into the warm, Monagasque night.

Holly glanced over at Artemis once, and then pressed 'retract'.

Turns out, that was a bad, bad move.

The line gave a forceful pull, wanting to recoil back the Hadron. And it was partially successful too, heaving the two a few feet into the air, expandable padding fluffing out around the harnesses with a faint _whoosh_ as Holly and Artemis' feet left the ground. But then something went wrong: the anchorage gave out, dumping the partially uplifted duo squarely back onto the ground in a tangled heap. The line – and its unconnected anchor – retracted back into the gun with a satisfied _schwick._

Or almost. Stunned, Holly blinked at the attachment in disbelief before noticing Artemis, collapsed on top of her. She shrugged him off with a grunt, then further inspected her failed weapon. No, the anchor hadn't retracted completely, having apparently ripped off the surface coat of the craft in a failed attempt to, well, anchor. The mass stuck there looked a little bit...spongey?

Something wasn't right. "Foaly? You'd better have some answers for me."

Having witnessed the catastrophe through his monitors, Foaly shook his head. "It shouldn't have come free."

Behind Holly, Artemis had risen and dusted himself off. He looked up at the small patch of night the tiny view from the high window afforded. There was nothing out there. Nothing but night and the constant screen of light pollution, filtering out the stars. He glanced at Holly.

"May I see your weapon?"

She handed it over without looking at him. "And why do you reckon that, Foaly? Because I'm pretty sure that if it had worked, I wouldn't be standing in the bathroom right now with a sore backside."

He whinnied indignantly. "You're looking at the very best anchorage possible. So much new tech went into that, I've got a room full of patent discs for it! A mechanical AND chemical holding portion -- the gripping mechanism is made of spindles, see. They contain tubes that slide and lock when activated. The retract causes them to liquefy and reform for the next use. See entire contact pad? Melds right to any known material on or under the earth. Covalent bonds, Holly. It _shouldn't_ have come free."

"And yet it did," came Artemis' voice. He held out the gun and its unwanted booty under Holly's nose to afford Foaly a view from both their iris cams. "Foaly, can you identify what this might be? A polymer of your design, perhaps?"

In the ops booth, the centaur leaned a little closer to his monitor. "Hmmm. I can't get sufficient readings from only the iris cams; we'll have to wait until you get to Holly's helmet."

Holly reached out two fingers, gingerly touching the dark, porous substance. "But do you know what it is?"

"Well, that'll depend on what the readings tell me."

"But?" Holly pressed.

Foaly sighed. The sound came like a rush through their earpieces. "No. It looks like foam, but no idiot would wrap their ship up in that. It wouldn't have been able to reach sonic like it did. The properties don't seem to add up."

"Which may explain why your contraption failed." Artemis caught Holly's eye and grinned at Foaly through her camera, a flash of white incisor.

The centaur nodded in understanding. "Because this might not be any known material on or under the earth."

//

* * *

The car ride home was a thoroughly miserable affair.

Butler had touched down in nearby Nice during their eventful night, weary but unwavering in his insistence to drive them back to the simple, four-story, Italian-style villa they had rented in Cannes. Hidden by the cloak of night, Mulch and Holly had quickly bundled up their fairy equipment, stuffing it into the trunk before the twins and Juliet were brought inside, the latter carried by her older brother. When Holly handed over the girl's limp form, Butler had glanced at Artemis with a momentary look of disapproval.

"I know," he answered, apologetic. "I'm sorry, old friend. She will most likely be well within the night."

Once seated, the trio mulled over the events of the evening, Holly and Artemis both nursing a plethora of bruises. Holly flexed a hand, almost expecting to see the tiny crawl of blue sparks rushing to mend her injuries. But there was nothing. Not a drop. Despite her best efforts, she felt her heart sink.

Artemis saw the action and caught her gaze for a moment. He looked vaguely sympathetic. But still not nearly sympathetic enough to call off this whole thing and relinquish it to the Lower Elements, she noted.

Holly frowned. No, that was just her frustration speaking. Trouble had already as good as told them that he'd have nothing to spare for this matter at the moment. They'd simply have to wait until the prison-rabbles blew over and resources became more accessible down below before they could even think of cobbling together the paperwork needed to look into it. And by then? Well, things could get bad, really bad. Bureaucracy, she thought with distaste. Holly rarely found herself envying Trouble's job.

But still. This entire kidnapping business was giving Holly an odd assortment of feelings to sort through: given Artemis' rather _spotty_ history of veracity, it was pretty easy to feel uneasy about everything that had happened so far – plans were told to them as an afterthought, mostly post-composition of follow-up arrangements in which they played a vital part.

_If _they were given enough time to feel uneasy. Usually things moved from zero to too complicated, too quickly and no one would have a spare moment to think about what was really going on. Who knows? Even now he may have been holding back something. Given the colossal deception Artemis had pulled the last time they had been together, she wouldn't put it past him. How quickly she had forgotten what these Artemis ordeals were like.

Or maybe it was just her. Artemis, she had to admit, had always had a knack for making her believe his word with one look, right back his early promises regarding the time stop. It was perpetually irritating and made Holly feel like she needed to question his plans simply because that was the logical thing to do.

Holly bit her lip miserably. Or maybe this bad feeling could be blamed on more physical reasons: her brain was currently fairy but her body was human, after all, mixing up the standard flow of information through her brain and central nervous system. The resulting effect was a psychological nightmare.

As for the rest of the car, nobody was faring much better, mood-wise. Myles was stuck in a contemplative funk after witnessing yet another kidnapping – so alike to the first and right before his very eyes. Furthermore, he was furious with his older brother who, for once in his entire life, had taken to treating him like a child and was withholding information. Myles also had a niggling suspicion of the others occupants of the car. Moira, after all, was the very first of his brother's friends that he had met, few as they were. And she was a girl, at that: a fact that would continually bring distaste to most 10-year-old boys for many millennia to come.

In the front seat sat Artemis, seemed overtly calm in contrast, observing the beautiful French night through the limo's windows as though he hadn't a care in the world. Only the rather deep furrow of his brow told of the depths of his displeasure.

And in the back, Mulch was still overcoming the last portion of his change-sickness (Holly's had merely subsided into the occasion stomach wrench). He was positioned over an opened plastic bag, occasionally retching into it wetly. Beside him, Juliet slept like a proverbial baby. If she had been awake, mind you, she might have protested her placing a little more vehemently.

And so Butler, sensing the rather heavy mood in the car, turned on the radio in a desperate attempt to diffuse the tension. Music this time, he decided, no radio. The media was rife with nothing but scare stories anyway, which would do nothing for the gloom. _Ah_, he thought, after his ears were met with the dulcet tones of the Righteous Brothers, and one he had been familiar with from his youth. His father had always listened to it, singing along at the top of his lungs while cleaning his rather extensive gun collection. Memories.

When _You've Lost That Loving Feeling_ came on the radio, both Holly and Artemis sank a little lower in their seats. They were up to two kisses now, though one didn't count. Or both of them. It was kind of hard to tell.

"Boy, do I love this song," Mulch commented innocently, glancing up from his bag.

Artemis massaged a temple with one hand. It would be a very long drive back, indeed.

//

* * *

**Rental House, Cannes**

"Wait, wait, go back to the last part." Trouble cocked an eyebrow. He mustn't have heard that correctly.

Foaly cleared his throat, about to speak before giving up. He glanced helplessly at Holly.

She sighed. "I was in the first-floor ballroom with Juliet and the twins when I saw one of the servers follow Artemis to the washroom. I thought it was a little odd and decided to follow her. And when I rounded the corner --" She paused, waiting for the next few facts to somehow rearrange themselves into a sentence that wouldn't make her feel remarkably awkward recounting. It never happened. She looked at Artemis and shook her head.

"Allow me to interject here," he offered, taking a breath. "Instead of visiting the washroom, I contacted Foaly once I had reached the upper floor. Who, it was later revealed, had been attending the birth of his firstborn child. At that moment, however, I had been under the impression that he was, for some reason, not monitoring the events of the evening. Which, though excusable, was true. I was then approached by said server." He tapered off, taking more than a moment to diplomatically formulate his next words.

Mulch beat him to it. "Then she laid one right on him. Front and centre."

"What?" Trouble sounded incredulous.

"She kissed him." Foaly even had the courtesy of backing up their story with footage from said kiss. Over and over again. From both feeds. Even Butler, who had until then been standing silent in the doorway, raised an eyebrow.

"And then the explosion happened," cut in Holly, hoping to usher the conversation along. "I went downstairs, found Adelaide Galibois missing and spotted the aircraft. Artemis and I made an attempt to latch on and follow it using the grappling function on the Hadron, but no anchorage happened."

Trouble gave Foaly's screen a disapproving glance. "The grappling function that was never supposed to fail? D'Arvit, Foaly, my calendar can barely contain enough numbers to describe your budget. What happened there?"

The centaur whinnied in protest. "It _should_ have worked. It would have worked on any other known aircraft in the world. But this one was different." A clack of keys sounded as he sent the data through. "My readings from Holly's helmet were all over the place on this substance. It actually tore off, for Frond's sake! Who'd wrap their air-worthy craft in something that'd actually tear? Currently, I'm waiting on the actual sample for analysis, but Holly just dropped it off at the Nice chute a few hours ago. We're waiting on the shuttle team for delivery."

"In all fairness, Commander, I've run some tests on it myself," offered Artemis, standing up from his chair. "Preliminary tests, mostly, but I couldn't seem to find an identifying match in any of my existing databases. The physical properties show very marked differences from what you would expect while investigating the molecular structure – sponge-like to the touch, but the molecular interactions would tell at something much more rigid. The explanation would likely point to the nature of the molecules themselves, but they seem to contain what appears to be a new element. I would run some tests on the properties of the substance, but I haven't yet had the time."

Trouble frowned. This was getting complicated. He had always had a very distinct level at which he felt Fowl's interference was too much, having mistrusted him since the days of the original kidnapping some ten years ago. The majority of his term in office had been blissfully Fowl-free, something that he was secretly glad of. But it all had to end sometime and here he was, staring right at it. A human-sized fairy mixed in with all these kidnappings? Further still, with Holly's face? And now this new and very mysterious substance. He'd be a fool to not keep an eye on it. If it were up to him, he'd have a pair of wings on in no time and would hop right on up to join them.

Sometimes, Trouble wondered why he took that promotion.

"Foaly," he said. "What do you suggest here?"

The centaur mulled it over for a moment. "We can't leave it alone, Trouble. This is a big deal. I'll get the samples in a bit and start running tests. Maybe we can locate where it came from, trace environmental residues and whatnot."

"Right. Sound advice, though I don't like it." Trouble sighed. "But we've got to stop those kidnappings from happening again. Frond knows what these guys are up to while we clatter away at computer keys. Alright. Captain Short, Diggums... Fowl. Are you all ready to follow through with this a little longer?"

"I never had much choice in these matters," Mulch noted. "Considering that fact that I'm already wearing human hide and puking my guts out. So let's just say my answer's a yes for now."

Holly nodded appreciatively, knowing the bundles of red tape Trouble would have to wade through to simply authorize this. Especially with Artemis involved. Speaking of which... She glanced at Artemis. "You don't have to stick around. Remember what I said to you before."

He flipped up the lid on his computer, not meeting her gaze. "Commander Kelp, I've already pledged my assistance to this case. I have a personal involvement in the matter and would like to see it through to the end."

"Right. However, let's try to keep your hand to strictly consulting whenever we can. Foaly, you're still on this case, though I'll ask when I need you. So. We'll figure out the substance, find the location of these kidnappers and you're all relieved. I'll have a dozen teams waiting in the wings."

The other members of mission looked a tad unsure. Trouble always made things sound easy; Holly had once heard him talk about troll-wrestling in the same tone he would explain opening a jar of peanut butter.

In the background of Trouble's screen, his secretary opened the door with a hefty stack of papers in hand. He spotted her and sighed. "I'm unfortunately out." The screen winked off unceremoniously.

"Well, there they are," said Foaly, cracking his knuckles with poorly disguised glee. It had been a fairly quiet couple of years, and the thrill of the challenge didn't escape him. "Our orders."

Mind you, he'd spend the majority of this ordeal in the Ops Booth. The others were understandably less enthusiastic.

"Indeed. There's nothing for it, then. We must work to minimize the amount of kidnappings until we gain a lead. There will be another party in Roussillon, two weeks from now." Artemis sounded a little put out. He reached for his cell phone. "I'll begin making arrangements."

Holly glanced round at him. "Okay, but on one condition."

"Would you not currently consider yourself a trifle too deep for conditional agreements?"

"Be that as it may." She reached over and not-so-delicately removed Artemis' cell from his grasp. "No more heels. I mean it."

He considered her for a moment. "You realize that, with your current height being 5'1, our sizes are rather --"

"Doesn't matter."

"And that you are currently experiencing a considerable degree less nausea than our fi--"

"Still doesn't matter."

Artemis frowned then, after a moment, held out one hand. "Agreed."

Holly grinned with the sweet sensation of triumph, relinquished the phone to his grasp and leaned back into the sofa – purposefully not leather in consideration of the current company.

Mulch plopped down beside her. "So? Whose party are we crashing?"

"I wouldn't say _crashing_, as we did receive an invitation. But she is another young heiress, within our target age group," he explained. Holly noted that Artemis' expression seemed irritated. "An old acquaintance of mine."

His darkening of mood hadn't quite slipped past Mulch either. "Ooh," he said in mock-delight. "What have we here? A lovely lady perhaps?"

Artemis frowned. "I'd not put it as theatrically, but unfortunately, yes. Though I suppose it would be more accurate to refer to her as 'our' old acquaintance." He held up an invite.

Holly took it from him, scanning the embossed text for the name of their host.

_Paradizo_, it read.

//

* * *

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